


Scarecrow (The Ballad of Whitney Fordman)

by josephina_x



Series: Smallville: The New Adventures of Whitney and Crew [1]
Category: Smallville
Genre: (but she's not -too- horrible revered either), (technically it may not get better), (this fic is not about Lana), (unless I screwed up somewhere), Bullying, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, I Wrote This Because I Can, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, Lex Gets Hurt, Mental Anguish, Mental Breakdown, Mental Disintegration, No Lana!bashing, Rating for Language, WARNING: POTENTIALLY TRIGGERING MATERIAL, Whitney is a Jerk, Whitney is a Violent Jerk, your mileage may vary
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-10-08
Updated: 2012-10-07
Packaged: 2017-11-15 21:00:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 27,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/531651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/josephina_x/pseuds/josephina_x
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life doesn't always go according to plan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Scarecrow (The Ballad of Whitney Fordman)

**Author's Note:**

> If Nicnac could write [this](http://archiveofourown.org/works/522987) and get away with it, then I figure I ought to be allowed to attempt giving Whitney the woobie!Lex treatment (and still make it stay in-canon!), just for kicks ;)
> 
> (...yeah, I'd actually been thinking about writing this for some time. And now I have "permission". Go fig.)

~*~*~*~*~*~

Whitney was pissed the fuck off.

Clark. Kent.

Goddamnit.

The bastard was scoping out his girlfriend, and, seriously, who the hell _plays sick_ to get attention from a girl they like?

Whitney whacked him in the chest extra hard as he gave him back one of the books he'd dropped. The guy didn't even flinch, really, but he didn't -- or couldn't -- really meet Whitney's gaze for long, either.

Hopefully Kent got the hint:

Stay off his girl.

And stop acting like such a little emo shithead to get attention.

...Seriously, what the hell was the jerkass thinking? Yes, Whitney knew full well that Lana was three years -- three _grades_ \-- younger than him. And yes, he knew that it was unheard of, even with her being the head cheerleader, for them to be dating that many years apart. But for chrissake, couldn't the asshat at least wait to move in on his girl until he'd graduated, first? Kent hadn't even tried out for the team yet, even though it was practically a given at this point that he'd make the freshman draft. Cocky little shit.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Jesus Chrst and goddamn it all, was Kent _trying_ to fuck up Whit's life? The bastard hadn't even tried out for the team!! Whit had _swore_ that he would, with the youngest Ross boy trying out, too -- those two did _everything_ together, he'd pulled from the grapevine. He'd had the usual suspects go around acting all threatening over the freshmen, tossing their weight around a little, show them who's boss.

They'd done a good job of it, too, and he'd told them so -- he'd been proud of them. Whit **swore** that they damn well weren't about to have any repeats of what he had seen last year -- not on _his_ watch. None of this freshmen-acting-like-they-owned-the-place bullshit and all being supposedly too good to follow The Rules, damnit. He was going to have enough trouble trying to hammer the bad habits from the previous year out of the sophmores; he didn't need to deal with it from the youngest Smallville High class, too.

The Rules were there for a fucking reason, damnit.

So yeah, he'd had his players put the Fear Of God into the lot of the ninth grade jocks and geeks and losers alike, and considering that -- _what the fuck_ \-- apparently Kent counted as a geek? The permanently-loser-status youngest Ross boy he hung out with _should've_ been chomping at the bit to be at tryouts, scared at shadows and hoping that becoming 'one of them' would take him off the shit list -- ha! more like put him under their thumb even more completely! team members who got out of line got hammered down _immediately_ \-- and Ross _should've_ pulled Kent along in with him in the process.

And, by god, Ross _was_ at the tryouts. Wasn't half-bad, either, by freshman standards, anyway. Not that that said much -- freshmen couldn't play _real_ football for shit. (Not until Whit and the rest of the team got done with them.) He wasn't much worse than any of his brothers had been, though, when they'd been just starting out themselves. And he had a lot of heart for the game.

Whit was starting to consider that maybe, just maybe, Ross' permanent-loser status might've had something to do with never _getting_ the chance to step out of Kent's shadow and stand up for himself. That very first years-ago fuck-up in first grade, when he'd let Kent take out that one idiot mouth-breather in Whit's year for him, instead of taking the beating like a man himself, had just followed the both of them around forever like a dirty open-secret all this time.

Kent, on the other hand...

What the fuck was going on?

The guy was the fucking son of the Man With The Golden Arm himself, for christssake!

He'd been none-too-happy when he'd dug into Ross for the dirt on him. Apparently Kent had told his idiot friend that he might not be _allowed_ to try out for the team.

Liar. Like _Jonathan Kent_ wouldn't be proud to have his son on the Smallville Crows, just like his old man.

Seriously, what the fuck? Did the guy think he was too good for them or something?! That just seemed... _wrong_ for the guy, but...

...was it maybe that he thought that he could get away with skipping all the freshman-year drills and dirt-pounding and blood, sweat, and tears, without having to go through the same pain as everyone else? Did he expect to just _breeze in_ sophmore year -- once Whitney had graduated and the slot was open -- and immediately get lead quarterback fucking _handed_ to him on a silver platter without having to put in the time?

Fuck. That.

You fucking _paid_ your _dues_ on the Crows. And anybody who thought otherwise was--

And then it occurred to Whitney in a flash -- after that episode in first grade, no-one had _ever_ messed with Kent since -- or Ross, who was under his protection -- not as as far as Whitney knew. Was it possible that Kent had _never_ had his authority challenged since then, and now thought he was too _good_ for everybody else, untouchable, because of that _one_ time? Was it possible that he was a Problem just waiting to happen?

And he was panting after _Lana_. Whit's girl. Christ.

Well, fuck that. Whit knew how to handle a Problem!

_\--you stopped 'em before they even got started._

And Whit knew just what to do.

...Same thing he'd do if Kent had had the guts to try out for the team, actually.

Pretty fucking convenient, really.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Yeah, ok, so tying Lana's necklace around Kent's neck was probably kind of a shitty thing to do, looking back on it.

At the time, Whit had been pissed, and Kent hadn't been able to take his eyes off it, and it was a girly fucking thing to wear, and Whit had been half-worried about trying to keep in on during the game -- what if he got tackled, took a solid hit while wearing it? It'd be bad if he broke it on the field, or lost it, and hurt worse digging into his skin -- there was a reason the team didn't wear jewelry on the field -- and he couldn't afford the distraction during the game. He couldn't be flinching away from the other team, worrying about all this shit. And if he _didn't_ wear it, he'd be worried about somebody grabbing it while he was out on the field. Like that jerkass freak Arkin.

Around _Kent's_ neck, on the other hand... Well, Whit would know exactly where it was, safe and sound.

Not like Kent would be messing with it in the meantime.

Thing was, Kent knew it was Lana's. Whit knew Kent knew, and Kent knew Whit knew Kent knew.

So Whit strung it up around him before he strung him up.

Maybe he'd see it like a favor -- a token from the girl he was lusting after _who wasn't his_. Maybe it'd help him hang on for awhile. Or maybe it'd make him burn with envy, rage, regret, despair -- something he couldn't have -- and he'd crack that much sooner.

Whatever way it fell out and however the bastard complained about it afterwards, it'd be a good tell for Kent's real character, and maybe how he felt about Lana, too. Whit was kind of morbidly curious about it, in a probably-really-fucked-up way.

Whit would just have to wait and see what his reaction was.

...Well, Whit had let him keep his boxers on. That oughta say something about what _his_ intentions should be.

\--Keep it in his shorts. Nobody wanted to see that shit from him.

Least of all Whitney.

~*~*~*~*~*~

"What's up in the bird's eye nest, idiots?" Whit called up over the two-way walkie-talkie, causually leaning against the water tower.

"Aw, fuck you, Fordman," Trevor called down to him on the walkie-talkie. Whatever. Chapell was on the crew, in the inner circle, and yeah he'd wanted to be in the game today, but sometimes you took one for the team.

 _Somebody_ needed to keep an eye on Kent, after all.

"How's he lookin'?" Whitney asked, glancing upwards, even though he couldn't see anything but the underside of the platform.

"Man, if I didn't know any better, I'd swear these binoculars are crap," Trevor complained, but his voice had an odd note to it.

"Why?" Whitney frowned.

"Because I can't see Kent doin' anything," Trevor said, and that was no fucking explanation at all.

Whitney heaved a sigh. "When'd you have to pull him down?" he asked, wondering.

There was a pause.

"Trevor, when did you have to fucking pull him down, _OVER_ ," Whitney repeated, annoyed. The guy couldn't pay attention long enough to answer a walkie-talkie, and he thought he'd be able to keep his head in the game?

Finally, "...Didn't," came the reply.

What the fuck?

"What the fuck do you mean, _'didn't'?!?_ " Whitney ground out. The game had ended two hours ago; he'd come over for a status report between the afterparty celebration and before running off to get changed for the Homecoming dance.

Silence.

"Are you telling me _he's still fucking up there?!?!?_ " Whitney damn near shrieked out like a girl, panicking. What the hell were those idiots thinking?!

"Christ, Fordman, cool it down a notch," came Geoff's voice, completely unconcerned.

Whitney ground his teeth and got ahold of himself.

"Johns," he said coldly. "You are supposed to be in your fucking car, ready to go, _not_ up in the nest," Whitney said slowly. There was going to be hell to pay.

"Just come up here and see," Geoff said. "You're not gonna fucking believe this."

"I _already_ cannot fucking believe this, _believe me_ ," Whitney hissed out, taking a few steps back and glaring up at the platform.

"You were _supposed_ to get him down when he broke, you--" Whitney clutched a hand to his head, seeing spots. He was that pissed.

Looking back on it later, he didn't know how he'd managed to keep his voice steady.

"Do I have to fucking explain this again?" Whitney said, heading for his car. "Were you not listening before? Two people on walkie-talkies, one person with binoculars above, one person in the fucking car. You watch him in the field, and you call down when you see him break--"

"He didn't," Geoff interrupted.

Whtiney froze, one hand on his open car door. " _What?_ "

"He didn't break," Geoff said. "He hasn't broken yet."

What?

No freshman had ever lasted four hours on the cross -- _nobody_.

"Trevor wasn't sure, so I had to come up to check," Geoff continued.

"You are fucking with me," Whitney said slowly.

"I am not fucking with you, Whit, I swear," Geoff insisted.

"That's impossible," Whitney said flatly, staring off at nothing.

"Yeah, well, Mr. Fucking Impossible is doin' it," Trevor said, taking back over the walkie-talkie line. "He hasn't broke down crying, or started struggling, or yelling for help, or... or _anything_ ," he said, repeating back half the litany Whitney had quoted at them earlier. "He's just... hanging out there. Breathing."

Whitney didn't say anything.

"I mean, he doesn't look all that great..." Trevor offered, like that was supposed to help somehow.

" _Of course he doesn't_ ," Whitney snapped. "He's been tied up to a fucking cross for four fucking hours!" He started pacing back and forth, because this was a fucking problem.

Kent might be a fucking Problem.

...Well, no. If he was one, he'd have cracked immediately, gone stark raving mad from the get-go. So he wasn't a Problem.

 _Yet_.

Because the original issue was that Kent had been acting like he was too good for everybody, and that he was untouchable. If he got out of this pretty much unscathed -- **without** _breaking_ \--

Then even if he hadn't thought that before, **he sure as hell would now**.

...Which meant leaving him up on the cross until he broke to fix it, but the sun was gonna go down in an hour or two, it was already starting to get cold, and he'd already been hanging up there for _four hours straight_.

Whit wasn't just the quarterback, he was also the captain of the football team. It all came down to him. He made the plays, and he was the one who made the split-second decisions. It was his call.

**Fuck.**

"Geoff," Whitney said after awhile, hating himself. "Get the fuck back down here and into your car."

"But--"

"If--" _fuck_ "-- **when** he breaks, it isn't gonna be pretty," he told them grimly. The ones who lasted the longest broke the worst. Always. And he should know. "Whoever's driving needs to be ready to floor it. Trevor's got the better eyes for watching," which was why they'd usually had him scoping out plays from the bleachers. "Geoff, you drive like your grandma," in other words, like a screaming fucking maniac. "You even _think_ he looks like he's breaking, you send Geoff after him, you hear me Trevor? Geoff, fucking bat-out-of-hell and pull him the fuck down. If you get a ticket, I'll fucking pay it, understand?" he added, curtailing any possible argument before it began. "Geoff, you stay with him until he's back in halfway one piece and not liable to go running off into the road and getting himself killed. Trevor, you stay up there watching the two of them and when Geoff gives the signal, you have him call me so I can come over and wrap this shit up. This is not fucking rocket science. You get me?"

"Yeah," he heard them both say,

"Good," said Whit, and then he got himself the fuck back to his house and into the shower.

He'd needed one; he'd broken out into a cold sweat. The shower he'd had in the locker room before had been made worthless; it might as well have never even happened.

He tried to enjoy himself as much as he could that night with Lana at the Homecoming Dance, putting the problem of Kent out of his mind completely.

He had a good amount of the spiked punch, so he didn't think to worry too much when he never got a phone call back later that night from the guys. Guys had needed calming down overnight before, after all.

~*~*~*~*~*~

The next morning, Whitney picked up Lana at her place and then strolled by the Kent farm like it was just an afterthought.

"All hail the homecoming king and queen," he heard the new girl in town say.

Then Lana said, "Clark. I didn't see you at the dance last night," and Whitney tensed.

But it was all he could do not to gape and stare as Kent said, "Oh, I was... I was a little tied up."

...What the hell? Kent was _cracking jokes_ about it?!?

And then Mr. Kent made his way over. --Shit. This was gonna go bad, fast.

But Mr. Kent immediately gave him a wide smile and walked over when he saw him. "Hey, congratulations. That was one heck of a game. I haven't seen an offense that good since I played," he was told with a hearty, friendly slap on the back, which was confusing as fuck-all, but...

"Thank you, Mr. Kent," Whit told him with a smile, accepting the complement wholeheartedly as intended.

But then he heard Clark say, "I'm going to get the rest of the boxes out of the truck," and the glow of high-praise left him as remembered why he was here.

"I'll help," Whitney said immediately, following Kent over.

Whitney was trying to scope Kent out, but the more he tried, the more frustrated and confused he felt. He was really regretting not having checked up with Geoff and Trevor last night before coming over. Kent was already up and about, back home? And he wasn't acting normally _at all_.

Which was to say, he was acting _too_ normally.

What the hell had happened last night?

Well, if Kent was cracking wise about it: "Kent, you realize last night was just a joke, right?" he said with feigned gallows humor to match Clark's own, to hide the sarcasm and cover his unease. No response. "Hey. I need that necklace back," he tried saying lightly, pushing it hard, because if the guy really _was_ loony for his girl--

"I don't have it," came the cool reply.

Hah! A response!

_\--Wait..._

Shit.

And then he started thinking of the three kinds of shit that Lana was going to bestow upon him if--

And he got sidetracked.

"Look, it's Lana's favorite, so..."

"So then you better go out to that cornfield and find it."

And Kent left Whitney staring after him, wondering what the _hell_ was going on.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Whitney escorted Lana around the farmer's market, but had to peel off after awhile to go see if he couldn't get some insight about last night out of his crew.

Which was to say that somebody was getting something vitally important beaten out of them if they didn't fucking explain themselves post-haste.

He left Lana with a few of her cheerleader friends and got to it.

"Trevor, Geoff..." Whit said, approaching the group, then giving a sharp head-nod to the side.

The three of them split off from the rest and Whitney demanded an explanation by simply saying, "Report."

They glanced at each other uneasily.

Whitney gritted his teeth. " _Now._ "

Still nothing.

He clenched his fists, then said, "What, do I have to walk you idiots through this by the hand?" God, this was giving him a headache. "Let's start with when you pulled him down."

Another long pause.

Whitney clenched his fists, and opened his mouth to assign the _worst_ possible punishment a captain could inflict on his fellow football teammates--

"We didn't."

Whitney stared at them, mouth left hanging open. Then he snapped it shut.

"What the fuck are you talking about," he said under his breath, glaring bloody murder, because that could not have meant what he thought it did.

"We didn't--"

" _Who. Did._ " Kent had to have gotten down somehow, or he wouldn't have been walking around this morning -- and he had to be hurting bloody murder, moving around like that after being tied up all fucking day -- but if it hadn't been one of them that had gotten him down...

Oh, there was going to be hell to pay.

" _Whit_ ," Trevor started to whine, but he was cut off with a glare.

"There was this guy," Geoff started. "Dunno who he was. Came up to Kent in the field."

" _Geoff_ ," Whitney growled.

"I'm talkin' for Trevor, I was down in the car -- christ, take a breather," Geoff said, and Whitney glanced over at him.

Trevor looked both embarrassed and freaked out, too much to talk.

"Fine," Whtiney said under his breath, cranking his jaw.

"Well, he came up to him," Geoff said. "Think they were talking. Trevor said Kent wasn't looking so good, maybe? He wasn't sure."

"How the hell were you not sure?" Whitney asked.

"Well, it was kinda dark out," Geoff said, rubbing a hand back behind his neck.

Whitney was pretty sure he blanched at that point, because how the hell long had...?

Those idiots! It got fucking _cold_ at night. If they'd left Kent up past dark, in nothing but his boxers--!

Orders were orders, but there was fucking common sense, too. He knew they knew better than that -- you had to know when to stick to the play, and when to improvise. He'd thought they knew better... and Kent had paid for it.

Well, he knew two idiots who were coming off the main first-string roster, after a major dressing-down for said idiocy.

He clenched his jaw nearly hard enough to crack his teeth to keep his mouth shut, because if he started in on them now-- ...well, he'd never get the rest out of them.

He kept telling himself that.

"So this guy goes up to them, and then kinda... leaves. Doesn't do anything. Trevor thought Kent was starting to look desperate, maybe, yelling after him or something? But he couldn't really tell, but we both thought maybe he might crack soon being, uh, left there again by somebody else," -- _no shit, sherlock!_ \-- "so I was starting up the car, but then Trevor says wait, because somebody _else_ was driving by there and stopped. Nearly ran the guy over. And, uh, the guy in the car got out and looked around, and then ended up going into the field, and he had a flashlight, and, uh, _he_ helped Kent down. And then Kent ran off."

"Did you get a good look at this 'guy in the car'?" Whitney said finally, because they'd said they didn't know the first guy, but...

"Um," Trevor said softly.

" _Who_ is _**'he'**?!?_ " Whitney nearly yelled under his breath, finally losing control of his temper.

"Luthor," Trevor said, both of them turning white and leaning away from Whitney.

Whitney stared at the two of them.

"Lex Luthor," Trevor said quietly.

...Goddamnit.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Whitney got back over to Lana, eyeing how Lex Luthor was on the approach -- why the hell was he here at a fucking farmer's market out in the ass-end of Smallville?! ...oh goddamnit, _Clark Kent_ \-- and fuck it he needed to talk with Kent, but he couldn't do it when... and then he saw how Greg Arkin was talking up Lana and he cursed under his breath, because _that_ guy--

"It's a date," Whitney heard the bug-boy say, and Whitney gritted his teeth, then walked right up and tried to play the nice boyfriend.

"Lana, your aunt's looking for you," he told her, and waited until she was far enough away to let out a little of his frustration. "Hey, bug boy, do me a favor and quit tailing my girlfriend."

And with that, Whitney, being the generous soul that he was, _would_ have let it go, but then Greg said, "You afraid of a little competition, Whitney?"

God, was the guy really that stupid? "We're not in competition, Greg, but if I find out you've been leaving butterflies in my girlfriend's bedroom, you'll know about it." He barely refrained from hauling off and punching the freak in the face, because if he was able to get into Lana's bedroom and leave butterflies...

He was able to get into Lana's bedroom.

If he didn't let his own teammates talk smack about his girl, then he sure as hell wasn't about to let some goddamn stalker keep eyeing up Lana like a virgin steak and maybe store up enough stupidity to--

"Yeah, well, just remember -- sometimes you're the windshield... and sometimes you're the bug."

Some days Whitney really wished he was the dumb jock everybody thought he was, because then he'd maybe be able to get away with beating the crap out of someone in the middle of the street, on account of a low-enough IQ and too many head injuries, without his dad coming down on him like a ton of bricks.

Plus, Lana wouldn't like it.

Being responsible and having to set a good example for his team _sucked_.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Whitney woke up in the ambulance wondering what the hell had happened.

He remembered being on the way to Riley Field to look for Lana's necklace -- the way Kent had talked, maybe it was tehre, and maybe it wasn't, but...

He apparently only had cuts and bruises, but he'd let them take him to the hospital to get checked out anyway, just in case. The last thing he needed was some football injury suddenly exascerbated by the crash causing him problems, especially this early in the season.

God, as if having _just_ gotten his truck down from the 'pile' in the parking lot after the Homecoming Dance hadn't been enough. Apparently a favor owed from a guy in construction to his dad was worth a crane unstacking a bunch of trucks without scratching the paint (much), and a lecture from his dad about not letting his crew go around pissing off geeks for no reason, like he'd needed someone to tell him that. And now he'd crashed the thing somehow? What had he run into? Or run into him? He almost didn't want to know how bad the damage had been. He was looking forward to what his dad had to say about it even less.

He dozed off again on the way to the hospital, tired and achey as shit, and came to on a bed in a room.

"Awake again, I see," he heard, and Whitney slowly levered himself up, wincing.

Lex-fucking-Luthor was standing at the foot of his bed.

Oh, fuck.

His 'what the hell? oh shit. goddamnit! what the _hell?!_ ' thought must've shown on his face, because the guy _smirked_ at him and said, "I was just wondering if Clark was really making a habit of rescuing people out of cars properly, or not."

"What?" Whitney said, wondering if he had a concussion after all. It _sort of_ felt like he had one. He usually couldn't tell right away, when he was playing football. Maybe if he waited a few minutes...

"Your truck was overturned. Clark pulled you out before it went up in flames," he was informed.

"My truck--" Whitney said, startled. Overturned?! Flames?!? Fuck! He barely remembered the crash, but he'd thought...

\--Wait, _Clark_ had pulled him out?

"Kent did _what?!?_ " Whitney blurted, sitting up straight, then wincing. Nobody had told him that. He _couldn't_ have heard that right!

"Yes. He did." Lex seemed to be eyeing him sideways.

"Fuck," Whitney said under his breath, wincing as he rubbed at his forehead with one hand. _...Why?_

"Because he's Clark Kent," Lex said, and Whitney realized he'd asked that out loud.

"Get real," Whitney muttered, glaring over at him. The guy _had_ to be messing with him, right?

Lex looked him over, seemingly unimpressed.

Well, screw him -- Whitney wasn't impressed, either, right back at him.

"...Wait, what'd you mean, 'make a habit'?" Whitney asked belatedly, as Luthor pushed off the wall he'd been leaning against, looking ready to leave.

"Oh, I was driving my car, crashed into a bale of wire strewn across the road, and went over the side of a bridge two days ago," Luthor said casually. "Clark pulled me out of the river." He gave Whitney the once-over again. "I was just wondering if he might've thought you worth doing the same."

"Guy needs a hobby," Whitney said without thinking.

Luthor looked at him blandly. "I suppose." Then he got a far more shrewd look. "Something perhaps more constructive than hanging out in fields, I imagine?"

"What?" Whitney said, trying not to go pale as he remembered what Trevor and Geoff had said, because the guy had nothing on any of them -- he didn't know it had been them. None of them had been around at the time.

...Which had kind of been the problem, actually. Whitney barely refrained from cursing.

...

Maybe the guy just meant the farmwork Kent did.

Luthor stared at him for awhile, then seemed to decide something.

"Why did you do it?" he asked.

"Do what?" Whitney said. Was the guy talking about his truck, or the field? Because the first one he hadn't been trying to do at all, whatever the hell had happened, and the second one... well, it was none of Luthor's business, anyway, and Whitney wasn't stupid enough to talk about that with anyone outside the team. Even if he was concussed, maybe.

Luthor gave him a long look.

And then the man clearly mentally dismissed him as _beneath_ him somehow, turned, and walked out the door of his hospital room.

Whitney stared after him as he left.

Crazy rich guys.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Whitney sighed, feeling even worse that morning than he had yesterday. He had a headache going on, no ibuprofin on him, and math class was next -- which usually gave him a raging headache even when he _didn't_ already have one. It took a lot of effort for him to do well in his classes.

And yeah, he'd felt worse before from getting tackled and shit -- pulled muscles, concussions, bruised and black and blue all over from freshman year before he'd started getting his shit together -- but this was different. This was more of a full-body ache, and it wasn't the same as having been able to tuck in his head and hit right like a good, clean, solid tackle would. He'd literally had a trunk run into him -- well, him run into the inside of his own truck. He was just glad he'd remembered to put on his seatbelt, or...

He hadn't been able to take much of a break the day before after the crash -- he'd had to take over the store for the afternoon until closing. And then he'd been subject to a lecture, because by then his dad had heard about the truck, and how Whit had checked himself out of the hospital without saying 'boo' to anyone about it, and everything else.

He also hadn't had a chance to check the field for Lana's necklace yet, and here she was coming down the hallway now.

Without preamble, his girlfriend asked him, "Where were you before the game on Saturday?"

Whitney sighed deeply. God, why did life hate him so much? Couldn't she have asked after her necklace instead? "Can we talk about this later?"

"It's a simple question, Whitney."

"I was warming up." Which was true.

"So you didn't grab Clark and hang him up in a field?"

Shit. Kent had narced on him? That had come out of nowhere. "Lana, it was just a prank," he said, tired as hell and half-irritated, telling her the same thing he'd told Kent, which he'd probably parroted off to her. ...Then he realized that Lana _wouldn't_ have been _asking_ if she didn't know for sure -- she didn't play games like the other cheerleading chicks did -- which meant Kent hadn't narced. So who had?

Lana gave him a look and he tried not to wince.

"Could I please have my necklace back?"

It was official. Life hated him.

Whitney took a deep breath, steeled himself, and said, "I lost it."

Lana looked angrier than he'd ever seen her, and said "Were you planning on telling me, or was that a prank, too?"

And that hurt like a bitch.

And then she stalked off.

Which also hurt like a bitch, too.

He forced himself to turn and walk away. He was so screwed.

Mainly because he couldn't talk about it with her. She was a cheerleader, and they had their things, and he and his crew had football things that she didn't want to hear about either, but even saying something like that might be too much. He couldn't explain, not without giving up stuff that had been passed down for years from player to player, _and_ it was a guy thing. Even if he tried to explain it, Whit was pretty sure she'd never get it.

...Or she would. He wasn't sure which would be worse.

He resolved to search for her meteor rock necklace in Riley Field that afternoon. He didn't want to show up empty-handed, and he needed some time to think up what to tell her.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Whitney borrowed his dad's truck and got himself over to the field.

...Well, close to it. He walked his way over. The less unexplained questions, the better.

Old Man Riley didn't take kindly to people on his property, but the Crows had an understanding with him. He'd been on the team, way back when, and he knew the score. So he looked the other way.

Whitney walked through the corn stalks, and up to the clear patch by the Scarecrow cross.

Alone in the middle of a sea of corn, he stared up at the bare cross.

Man, this goddamn thing...

He took a deep breath, walked into the bare patch and up to the post, and closed his eyes.

He touched the wood lightly, breathing in the scent of the wood and the corn.

He shuddered slightly and stepped back, letting his fingers fall away.

He glanced up at the cross again, then down at the ground, and sighed unhappily.

The wind shifted through the corn rows, and the rustling of the stalks was suddenly punctuated with an odd out-of-place sound.

Whitney turned and found himself staring Lex Luthor straight in the face.

"What the fuck are you doing here?" Whitney said, frowning, taken aback.

Luthor, for his part, looked startled, but recovered quickly. "It's a free country."

"Not on private property, it ain't."

"Isn't," he found himself corrected.

Whitney glowered. He wasn't out here for a grammar lesson.

"You following me?" he asked, frustrated.

He got an incredulous look and a laugh at that.

...Okay. That was a 'no'.

"Why are you out here trespassing, then?" Whit accused him, standing square-shoudered.

"So are you," Luthor pointed out, except--

"--No, I'm not. I have permission. I _know_ **you** don't."

"Oh?" said Luthor.

"Old Man Riley hates you Luthors," Whitney informed him. "If he knew you were out here, he'd be out himself, filling your ass with buckshot at forty paces and screaming bloody murder."

Luthor _winced_.

"Hell, he'd probably shoot you in the face, soon as look at you, if you went up and knocked on his door," Whitney continued helpfully.

"I think I get the picture," Luthor said flatly.

"So, why the hell _are_ you here?" Whitney said, because he didn't want to start in on things with an audience if he could help it.

Luthor gave him... what was that, a _sneer?_ "I was coming back to reflect on what I've seen here. I didn't expect anyone else out here, returning to the scene of the crime."

"What crime?" Whitney said, frowning.

Luthor stared at him for a long moment.

"Crucifixion," Luthor said scathingly. "This is the second time that I've seen--"

And Luthor's eyes widened as he was jerked forward and made to stare directly into Whitney's eyes, his lapels clenched in Whit's fists.

"What the hell do you mean, _'the **second** time'?!?_ " Whitney ground out low, in full-on rage. Luthor had only been in town for a handful of days, so who the hell else had--?

And then Whitney blanched as he had a horrible thought. "Are you telling me Kent was up on that _twice in three days??!_ "

And suddenly it all made a horrible sort of sense, because...

Everyone broke the first time. _Everyone_.

But once you made it through the crucible, once you'd been cracked and torn and broken apart, you were put back together again, molded and pounded down into **steel** , hardened and strong and sure, and _you never broke again_.

...Oh god, what the hell had Mr. Kent done?

For a father to do that to his own son...

\--He had no right! That wasn't for anyone outside the current active team! It wasn't his say -- not anymore!

" _What the hell did you see and when!?_ " Whitney demanded, lips curled back from his teeth, almost shaking with rage and panic and dread, because _someone was getting put into the ground for this_.

Even if Whit had to do it with his bare hands.

Luthor was dead white, with an almost healthy tinge of grey-green. "Twelve years ago, I saw someone else on that cross," the man not-quite stammered out.

Whitney remembered how to breathe.

He slowly released the death grip he'd had on Luthor's front jacket and took shaky deep breaths to try and calm down.

"Not... not recently," Whitney echoed. "Not..." Kent. Thank god. And then it hit him. "Twelve years...?" But that would have been--

"You were here when the meteor shower hit?" Then he realized. "Somebody was tied up out here when the meteor shower hit?"

Oh fuck -- and the water tower had been hit, too!

Shit, shit, shit!

"Jesus Christ," Whitney breathed out, backing off a few steps and running his hands through his hair. "Was the guy ok? Did you get him down? What about the guys at the tower?"

...Luthor was staring at him.

"What?" Whitney said, annoyed, because why was the guy tongue-tied all of a sudden?

"You... are worried about..." Luthor started, almost hesitantly, like he was feeling his way towards solid ground with words, and definitely taken aback.

"Look, did you get him down, or didn't you?" Whitney said angrily, because that was the more important thing, really. If he'd been _here_ \--

"I was nine," Luthor said without inflection.

Whitney blinked at him.

"Oh," he said. Right. That would mean... he'd probably been way too short to reach. And was only three years older than Whitney. "Uh, who'd you get to help?"

"I didn't."

Whitney blinked at him, and then opened his mouth--

"A meteor strike hit so closely that I was caught in the shockwave. The field was flattened. The cross came down, as well."

"You ok?" Whitney asked reflexively, without thinking. He barely remembered the meteor shower, but what he did remember... it had been bad.

"I was in shock, and lost my hair, but I'm otherwise fine," came the mild reply.

Whitney snorted. "Sure, except for maybe the nightmares and flashbacks you're gonna give yourself coming back here alone," he said. Then winced and added, "Kent being up there in the middle of the night doesn't count as 'with you'."

There was a pause, then:

"You do realize that you've just implicated yourself, don't you?" Lex said smoothly. "Why don't you just tell me who you had over at the water tower colluding with you, and save everyone some grief?"

Whitney stared at him for awhile, because the guy wasn't actually _serious_ , was he? Then he mentally kicked himself. Then he mentally kicked himself again. "Kent could've said something to _me_ about what happened, thinking I was in on it, and having people up on the water tower doesn't mean they were doing anything with the Scarecrow stuff -- you can see anything in the entire town from there, if you're looking for it," he informed the rich dude belligerently.

Luthor's eyes narrowed.

"Nice one with making up the whole meteor shower thing there, by the way," Whitney said sourly. "Very classy."

"I wasn't lying," Luthor said, openly glaring.

"Well, then who was up on the cross back then?" Whitney said.

"Jeremy Creek," Lex supplied.

Whitney scoffed. "Yeah, ri--" _Wait._ "Isn't that coma-boy?"

Luthor gave him a blank look.

Whitney sighed. "Coma boy. Uh, the guy who was in a coma, woke up, and the new girl thought he'd had something to do with those three former Crows players who'd ended up electrocuted comatose? Don't you read the Torch?"

Another blank look. "The what?"

"The Torch. The school newspaper? --Hey, it's better than the Ledger sometimes. Don't knock it. New-girl knows her stuff."

"...'New girl'?"

"Chloe." At Luthor's blank look, he added, "...You know, Sullivan? She moved here last year? Her dad runs the plant? --God, you really _are_ new in town, right off the bus." That got him a look. "Crashed car. _Whatever._ You'd probably be safer taking the bus."

"Doubtful," said Luthor. "But that hardly has any bearing on whether I am being truthful. I recognized the boy. It was the same person I'd seen twelve years ago in this field, crucified."

"Hey, come on, that's not possible--" Whitney frowned, because he remembered hearing something about. "Aw, man, he didn't age or something." Then he frowned, because he knew The List, and there was no Jeremy Creek on it.

"You don't know that that was the Crows team who strung him up; that could've been anybody," Whitney pointed out, though not really liking the idea that somebody not in the inner circle might be running around doing that shit. You could kill somebody if you did it wrong, or worse. "Probably he just didn't like those guys from before, was all mad when he woke up, and went after them with a toaster in the bath, or something. Geeks and losers can snap and become Problems. We look out for that shit."

...And now the guy was staring at him with his jaw dropped.

"What?" Whitney said, crossing his arms. "Jocks like me get to hit shit all the time. Takes the pressure off. Geeks and dorks and losers don't, so they get all moody and stuff. It all builds up, or something. Somebody's got to do something about it."

...Luthor looked like he wanted to hit _him_.

"...So you think that taking somebody who is about to snap and stringing them up on a cross is a good way to fix that?" Luthor said slowly, tonelessly.

"What?!" Whitney said, shocked, because that was _not_ what the Scarecrowing was for!

...Except then he remembered that he'd been thinking that if Kent had been a Problem waiting to happen, that Scarecrowing him would break him down and then they could--

Oh. Goddamn it.

That didn't work on Problems. You couldn't fix them like _that_.

And he'd been thinking that he _could_ fix Kent like that from the get-go, like an extreme version of the sort of get-the-cocky-idiot-cut-off-from-everybody-in-the-woods-and-them-beat-some-sense-into-him thing that they had to apply repeatedly to some of the worse offenders in the not-a-jock-just-a-jerk arena at school until they got better. Which was not the same thing.

The little emo dudes -- the _real_ ones, not the fakey-shit Kent tended to pull -- didn't respond well to beatings. They tended to... shatter, or something. And cry a lot. Probably. Whitney hadn't actually tried before, because that was just pathetic to do to somebody for no reason. He'd just seen the results of what some bullies had done back in elementary school, who had used to roam around doing their shit before they'd gotten themselves face-planted into the floor or body-checked into a wall or shoved through a door by somebody's older brother. Or him.

...Or Kent.

Oh goddamnit times twelve.

What the hell had he been thinking? _Kent wasn't a Problem._ Not even close.

...Actually, fuck, he _did_ know what he'd been thinking.

...

Luthor was looking at him weird.

"What," Whitney said, really fucking unhappy with life in general at the moment, but most of all himself.

"Why did you do it?" Luthor asked him, again, the same as he had at the hospital.

"If you think I'm answering that with anything other than, 'I don't know what you're talking about,' then you're out of your bald little mind," Whitney informed him coldly. "And it's none of your business, even if I did." he glowered at Luthor. "It's even less your business to be running around trying to get me in trouble with my girlfriend and drag her into things."

"I--"

"I know it wasn't Kent; he's not a narc," Whitney said accusingly. "You're the only guy who seems to care about trying to get me to 'confess'."

"...Fair enough," Luthor said cooly, with a shrug. "Why don't we compromise then. I will stop hounding you and attempting to get you and your cohorts arrested for hurting my friend, and you will tell me _why_."

"Why what?"

"Why you did what you did," Luthor gritted out, like it was some great concession on his part.

"You're kidding, right?" Whitney said. "You haven't got jack to try and get us arrested for _anything_. Kent isn't going to talk. Nobody would say anything about it. So why the hell would I agree to something like that?"

"I could find evidence," Luthor said darkly.

"What, under a rock?" Whitney smirked, before he caught Lex's meaning. "Hey, you go making shit up, you'll get _yourself_ arrested, idiot. It's your word against ours, and you're no eyewitness. Everybody knows where I was, I know where everybody else was, and all my team can vouch for each other."

"You think I can't garner enough evidentiary support?" the rich boy scoffed.

"Uh, no," said Whitney. "If you can't say I was here, doing shit, or the same thing about anybody else, then that's it. Circumstantial." Hell, he knew that from TV. Everybody did. "Besides, half the town hates you enough to string you up to a cross already, and you're thinking about going after the town football team? They'd just screw with you out of spite if you tried."

Luthor sucked in a breath. "Well, why don't you then?"

"Huh?"

"Why don't you go stringing me up there?" Luthor nodded at the cross. "You'd make a lot of people happy, wouldn't you?"

"I'm not doing that," Whitney said flatly, wondering what the hell was wrong with the guy. "That's bullshit."

"Why? Because I'm rich and you're afraid of the consequences?" he smirked.

"I could give a shit about how much money you have," Whitney said, feeling a little sick. "My family owns our house, our land, and our store. You Luthors don't buy jack shit from us. You've got nothing we want, and no leverage that your money can buy." And, just because he was getting morbidly curious as to how fucked up the guy really was, he added, "And 'consequences' implies that you talk, or even get found."

Huh. The guy went still like a rabbit. And the look in his eye that he was trying to hide with a glare was--

...Oh.

Well, that explained it.

"Nobody outside of high school gets tapped for the Scarecrowing, everybody knows that," Whitney told him, sighing, because really -- clueless much? "You don't have to be scared about some gang of idiots jumping you in the middle of the day to string you up. This isn't the fucking Dark Ages; it's Kansas," he said, rolling his eyes.

The guy's back went almost rigid, and he scoffed, saying, "Who said I was worried about me?"

... _Right_. "Who else would you be worried about?"

"Clark."

Yeah, because the little rich kid who was probably a narc and a loser when he was Whit's age and probably deserved every beating he got, _totally_ gave a damn about somebody other than himself, in particular a guy who had no money and toiled in the dirt every day so other people could eat. _Sure_.

"Yeah, well, it's a little late for that," Whitney said, and then he squatted down by the base of the cross because, well, if the guy wasn't going away...

"What are you doing?"

"Looking for something," Whitney said with infinite patience, as he scrabbled in the dirt himself.

"Your girlfriend's necklace that you borrowed?" he heard the rich jerk say.

He finished what he was doing, then slowly looked up at the guy.

"You have it?" he asked.

"No," he heard the guy say, and it sounded like the truth.

He started to go back to what he was doing, and then the guy continued, "I found it two nights ago and gave it to Clark yesterday afternoon," and that sounded like the truth, too. The _I'm sure he's given it to Lana by now_ was implied.

He found himself staring back up at the guy, who was watching him expectantly.

Whitney couldn't help but laugh a little.

And damn, did the rich jerk look confused at that.

"You've got balls, Luthor," Whitney said, then went back to what he was doing.

There was silence for awhile, and then a repeated, "What are you doing?" with a lot more annoyance inserted in.

"Looking for something," Whitney repeated, with a lot more patience.

"You don't believe I found the necklace?"

"Oh, I believe you," Whitney said, standing up and shuffling off across the small clearing, kicking up dirt as he went.

"Then _what are you doing?_ " Luthor said, sounding even more irritated.

...And they continued this little song and dance on-and-off for a good five minutes before Whitney said, "Nothing, I'm done."

"What?"

"I'm done. There's nothing to find anymore."

He had trouble suppressing a laugh as Luthor got a blank look, then stared around the clearing before realizing that there were no footprints or anything that looked identifying at all, anymore. Whitney had completely obliterated the telltale marks of anybody else's presence having been there before -- all that was left were his footprints and Luthor's.

Luthor made a strangled noise.

"Problem?" Whitney asked in an innocent tone, and got a glare for his trouble.

"Oh," he added, as he strode up to Luthor. "And don't worry about having found Lana's necklace here. I'm sure she'll be happy to get it back from whoever found it. I told her I lost it earlier this afternoon, so it's not like she'll be surprised if somebody else ran across it."

"You didn't lose it; you strung it up around Clark's neck."

"I had it and I knew where it was, and then I didn't have it, and then I didn't know where it was," Whitney said. "That's 'losing something'. Buy yourself a dictionary and look it up; it's not like you can't afford it."

Lex glared at him, eye-to-eye.

Whitney had bulk on him, though, and from the look in the guy's eye and his stance, it was obvious that the poor bastard had no confidence in his own fighting ability. Not a positive one, anyway. He'd gotten in fights before -- that was obvious -- but he'd never held his own and won. No self-assurance, and no confidence that he could handle himself well in a fist-fight, one-on-one or otherwise.

"What are you going to do?" Luthor said quietly.

"Well," Whitney said. "I figure I'll probably walk back to my dad's truck, get in, drive over to Lana's, talk with her, and let her break up with me, because she probably will, given how upset she was over whatever the hell you told her. And then I'll go have a talk with Kent about what happened two nights ago. And then I'll get back to my parents' store and help out for the rest of the night." He looked Luthor over blandly. "Got a problem with that?"

Luthor blinked at him. "Clark probably already gave the necklace back--"

"I know."

"If you try and warn Clark off of Lana--"

"Only if she doesn't break up with me," Whitney said, warm as the summer sun.

Luthor glowered. "You'd let her and Clark happen?"

"She's her own girl," Whitney said, not sure what to think of how Luthor was responding to this -- where was the guy's mind going here? He shifted on his feet. "She's not a prize to be won. If she doesn't want to be my girl..." He wasn't sure how to put this, the idea was so foreign. "It's not like I can _make_ her go out with me."

"You... love her?"

Oh geez -- hit with the hard-and-heavy stuff, why don't you! "I... care about her a lot. She's my girl. I'm serious about her." He shrugged. Then he said, "Never would've figured you for the tiara-and-butterfly-wings type."

Luthor looked startled, then taken aback. " _What??_ "

Whitney rolled his eyes. "Kent's fairy godmother?" he said, not missing Luthor's reaction in the least.

Luthor coughed and then almost looked embarrassed. "More like a babushka in a headscarf," he muttered.

"...Is that some kind of fairytale thing?" Whtiney said, frowning.

Luthor gave him a sideways look. "Yes."

Whitney snorted. "What, rich kids get the weird-ass versions of bedtime stories, or something?"

"Or something," Luthor said, with a sharp grin.

Right. The versions with all-teeth. Whitney got it.

"Fine, whatever, Team Kent go," Whitney not-quite-laughed. "Good to know I'm up against the both of you together, instead of individually."

Luthor looked uneasy all of a sudden. Of course he did. Whit had made that fairy costume comment earlier on purpose -- because that was what Lana was known for on the cover of Time Magazine, and maybe the guy was an idiot, but that didn't mean he was _stupid_.

Neither was Whitney.

"She's fourteen," Luthor said, sliding his hands into his pockets.

"And you're something like twenty or twenty-one," Whitney agreed, stepping forward, just staring the man down. "And if I thought you were pulling bullshit with Kent and actually thinking of trying to corner her like some slab of meat in a market, we wouldn't be leaving here until I was sure that you'd be shitting blood for a month and couldn't help but flinch away at the sight of her," Whitney informed him cooly.

There was a long pause.

"I'm not going to rape some fourteen-year-old kid," Luthor said slowly.

"Yeah, I figured not. I've heard you like 'em older and a lot more willing," Whitney agreed, backing off slightly. _Which is why I'm going to let you walk away._

Luthor gave him a long look. "Are you threatening me?"

"Do I need to, to warn you off of her?"

Luthor's eyes narrowed, and then he shook his head once.

Okay, then.

"I want you leaving Kent alone, then."

Whitney's eyebrows went up. "Are you warning _me_ off _him?_ " he said, incredulously, because it wasn't like he didn't have a girlfriend already! Then he gave Luthor a look. " _He's_ only fourteen, _too_." He crossed his arms.

It took a moment for Luthor to catch his meaning, and Whitney had to suppress a smile as Luthor was sent sputtering.

"Well, good to know you feel so secure in your manhood," Whitney said amusedly, and that got him a terse:

"I am attracted to women!"

"Yeah, but are you attracted to guys, too?" Whitney prodded, and he knew he wouldn't be able to keep a straight face for much longer.

"I've never been seen with--!"

"Just because the gossip rags don't catch photos of you with men doesn't mean you don't; it could mean you're just more circumspect with them," Whitney waved off, because he knew what he was talking about. Star quarterback, and two newspapers in town: if he'd ever been caught drinking, or racing motorbikes half-assed, or doing half the shit he did at the bonfires, it'd be plastered all over the papers. Didn't mean he did _everything_ people thought he did and got away with, though.

Luthor gave him an unreadable look, so Whitney decided, _yeah, what the hell, let's see what we can get here,_ and leaned forward, turning on the charm.

Luthor didn't flinch, or really react at all. He just stood there with his hands in his pockets, mainly. His eyes got a little wide though, and the tips of his ears just went slightly pink... which Whitney had expected.

Whitney grinned and packed away the sexy charisma. "Yeah, thought so," he said smugly. He was _so_ going to have to find a way to bring up this conversation with Lana. _Funny. As Hell._ And he knew she'd appreciate the humor.

Luthor stared at him, and Whitney waggled his eyebrows at him over-lecherously on purpose. That got him a completely disbelieving look from Luthor, and made Whitney laugh.

"So, I probably don't need to warn you off Kent, then, either. ... _yet_ ," Whitney grinned.

" _Ever_ ," Luthor stressed roughly.

"Aw, but the guy will feel so unloved!" Whitney teased. "He'll need all sorts of comforting after Lana turns him down, and he's such a sexy, sexy beast."

Luthor _choked_.

"What, you think that Lana'll just jump into somebody else's arms right after breaking up with me," Whitney said, shaking his head, because _really?_ "She's not that kind of girl." He shrugged. "And it's not a sure thing, anyway."

"After what you did, do you really think she won't?" Luthor said in utter disbelief.

"Hey, I've screwed up and done some really stupid shit before, and she's forgiven me when I didn't deserve it. She's done less stupid shit than I have, but I've forgiven her for some things, too. Nobody's perfect. What I'm gonna have to talk out with her now is gonna be worse, but yeah, she might. Probably won't, and she'll be mad as hell for a long time, maybe, even if she does, but..." He shrugged again. "It's up to her."

"I don't want you taking it out on Clark afterwards," Luthor insisted, and Whitney frowned at him.

It took him a moment to realize what that must've sounded like to somebody who didn't know anything about what Whitney actually needed to talk about with Kent. And the fact that it was going to be more of an explanation and an apology.

"...You actually do give a damn about him." It was more of a question.

"He's my friend."

"Yeah?" said Whitney, and Luthor actually looked serious, like he _was_ willing to fight for _that_. Even if he thought it'd go badly for him. "And what happens when the rest of the town starts saying you two are fucking behind his parents' back? --Because the gossip mill can be vicious, a lot of people don't like you, and nobody's gonna understand why you two are spending any time together at all," he warned the guy.

"I don't care what other people say about it," Luthor said, and Whitney had to give him some props. If there was one thing Whitney knew, it was that it was one thing to get talked about by people who didn't know you about shit you didn't care about, but it was a completely different thing to get shitted on by people who maybe _did_ know you about something that you _did_ care about that was none of their damn business, anyway. He'd seen what had happened to some of the older players when he'd first started playing, and he'd had a few things happen to him himself. He tried to learn by example and avoid the worst of it, but the papers and the gossip could be really fucking cruel sometimes.

Losing a game was even worse. _Everybody_ to a man got on you about how badly you did, all your screw-ups, and what you should and shouldn't've done? Of course he already knew all that, he'd been the one on the fucking field -- it wasn't like he needed somebody to tell him after the fact, let alone everybody and their dog! But you couldn't tell anyone that, or they'd call you stuck up or ungrateful or arrogant, or worse. So, you won as much as you could, and when you lost you gave a sad, humble smile and bore it, because that was the price you paid for playing for somebody more than just yourself. You risked the animosity and anger and bitter hate for the smiles and cheers and sun-in-glory, but at the end of the day you did it not just for the fans but for your _team_ , because they _needed_ you and you didn't want to let them down. And being _both_ the team captain _and_ the quarterback who called the plays made it a hundred times worse, but Whit had gone into it eyes-wide-open. He could take it.

But there was one thing he'd never had to deal with before, and that was getting called out on who he'd been friends with. He couldn't _imagine_ having to try and defend that to the town at large, because how the hell could you do that, anyway? Luthor and Kent were gonna have a hell of a time of it, but... well, Kent would be able to take it, as cry-into-your-pillow-at-night **frustrating** it was going to be for him. Mainly because he was going to be going up against his own dad if he did it -- Mr. Kent _hated_ the Luthors.

If Luthor's belligerence was any indication, then maybe so could Lex.

"You got him a truck and he gave it back; either you're fucking, or you're trying to buy sexual favors, and the Kents are being all pious outrage about it. That's what they're gonna say. Are you ready for _that?_ " At Luthor's shocked look, Whit said, "What -- you think nobody noticed Kent driving a new truck across town, and then never again? If the Kents had that kind of money, they'd've bought a new tractor or something, not another truck."

"...So if I bought them a tractor, they'd keep it?"

Jesus. What was _with_ this guy? "They're not gonna keep any gift you give 'em if it's not something they can't afford easily." The guy looked seriously put out. "Why are you trying to give them shit, anyway?"

"He saved my life."

Oh, jesus fucking christ. "Are you _trying_ to insult them?"

"What?" Luthor's head snapped up.

Whitney stared at him for awhile, and Luthor stared right back.

...Jesus-fucking-Christ-on-a-pogostick, he had no fucking _concept_. "How much is your life worth?" Before he could answer: "How much do you think your life is worth? Forget that -- _a_ life? Anybody's? They're not gonna differentiate. How much do you think the Kent's think one is? --Because if you think that your life is worth as much as a _truck_ ," Whitney steamrolled over Luthor's start of a protest, "or that the Kents think that you can _replace_ someone's life with a big hunk of moving metal that's only as useful as the person _driving_ it, then you're insulting them." Whitney grimaced at him.

"If you think that you can just give them a truck and say, 'hey, I've paid for this, what you did for me,' and be done, and wash your hands of it and walk away, and that's it, they'll never respect you one bit, and they won't let you anywhere near Kent, if he'd even want to associate with you, thinking like that." Luthor paled at that. "So don't think that giving things to them will somehow make you 'even', like there's a tally sheet somewhere. It doesn't work like that," Whitney said, then overrode Luthor again, "--because _they_ don't think it works like that, and _they_ are the one's you're trying to get along with and impress, right?"

"I'm _not_ trying to 'impress' them," Luthor muttered angrily.

"You're trying to do _something_ ," Whitney told him, "and apparently Kent listens to his parents way more than anybody else, because nobody else I know would give a truck back unless they _literally_ **couldn't** keep it." And now Whitney was feeling sympathetic frustration, because he'd wanted Kent on the team, and... "You're gonna have to make sure his parents don't give him an absolute 'no' about hanging out with you, or that shit just won't fly. And that means getting along with them, at least a little bit."

"Fine," Luthor said tersely, and yeah, it looked like he knew what he was signing up for. "I don't suppose you have any other stellar opinions about this that you'd like to share? It's not like I've had many friends," he said sarcastically, but there was just enough bitterness under it that Whitney had to stifle a wince because, fuck, that was way more barefaced truth than he'd ever wanted to know.

"Ok. Whatever. You want to be a good friend to him? --Get him off the farm more."

Luthor stared at him.

"Why?" the man finally had the presence of mind to ask.

"Because something weird's going on over there," Whitney told him. "Clark should've tried out for the team, but he didn't. Ross said that it was because he said his dad wouldn't let him, but that has to be bullshit."

At Luthor's frown, he remembered that the guy was an out-of-towner. He sighed. "Look, Mr. Kent was the star quarterback the last time we went to the state championship and won. There's no way he would not want his son playing on the team." Except... "But when I went over there two days ago to see Kent, Mr. Kent complemented me on Saturday's game. Really high praise, coming from him."

"So?" Luthor said sourly.

" _So_ ," Whitney spelled out for him, "He didn't say one word about how he thought Clark might be good on the team, or how he was hoping to get on next year after enough practice, or anything. He didn't talk up Kent _at all_." At Luthor's noncomprehending look, Whitney added, "Look, everybody -- and I mean _everybody_ in town with a son in high school -- _always_ talks their kid up to me like they want them on the team, even if the sons themselves aren't wanting to play. And the guys who used to be on the Crows are even worse about it. But Mr. Kent didn't do that. It was as if Clark didn't even exist. That's not normal. Something's going on there."

Luthor frowned. "And you knew this before?"

"No, I thought Kent must've lied to Ross before and I got pissed off over it. But after that? --Now I'm not I'm not so sure," he admitted. _And if you're so damn pushy about the 'why' of things..._ Well, he'd settle for Luthor just getting Kent out of the house once in awhile, at least. Guys who went shut-in went bad-and-creepy and became Problems that caused Trouble a _lot_ more easily and often than those who didn't, and he didn't want to see that happening to Kent. Guy was too good for that shit.

Luthor was silent for awhile.

"I'll... see what I can do," he said finally.

Whitney nodded once, then walked past him.

Luthor began to follow him out of the field.

They walked in silence through the corn, and Whitney turned over in his head what Luthor had essentially promised as a favor to Whit, because he really didn't have to go about doing it that way.

And so, because he could at least say _this_ to the guy, he added, "How hard do you think it is to get somebody tied up on a cross?"

"What?" Luthor said, startled. "...Not easily," Luthor admitted dourly after some thought, glaring holes in his back.

"And how hard would it be if that somebody pulled every trick in the book and _then_ some, trying _not_ to get tied up on one, because they didn't want to be?" He glanced over his shoulder back at Luthor. "Especially a guy like Kent?"

Luthor stared at him.

"Look, you must've looked over all of us, trying to figure out who might have been here and not. Kent works on a farm, tossing haybales around like some people toss playing cards. Do you know how difficult it is to string up even a straw-and-cloth scarecrow to a thing like that? A person is even heavier. Besides, if Kent had put up a serious fight, then at least some of us would've come away bloody, or at least a little black and blue. So, either Kent didn't end up on the cross," which he knew Luthor knew wasn't true, having seen him up there, "or Kent had to get hurt really badly to keep him docile for it," which Luthor should also know wasn't true, having seen him several times the last few days, "or the football squad didn't do it," and a little uncertainty about that could go a long way with keeping this guy's mouth shut, Whitney figured, "or Kent didn't put up much of a fight at all, if any." And he hadn't. The guy had barely put up a token resistance -- he'd barely struggled at all, nearly limp the entire time.

Looking back on it, if Jonathan had told Kent what was what, and Kent had already broken once, then yeah, he wouldn't have had much reason to struggle. He'd have known he could last, and injuring anybody on the team before the big game out of spite, when he knew what was going on, would just hurt the team's chances at winning.

...Which all made sense, except for the fact that Kent was all but avoiding him and hadn't stepped up to join the team, after. Which made it seem like he _hadn't_ known what was what, after all, but that made _less_ than no sense at all.

"Are you telling me that Clark _wanted_ to go up on that post?" Luthor said in a strangled tone.

"Don't be stupid -- _nobody_ wants to get strung up on that thing!" Whitney snapped back.

"So everybody who goes up is willing?"

"There's always a Scarecrow for good luck. Everybody knows the score," Whitney said the party line under his breath as he brushed aside another sheaf of corn. It fucking hurt hanging up there, not to mention everything else that went down with it, but the people who did... They knew.

"And you think Clark _really understood?_ "

" _No_ , because he's not _on_ the team," Whitney grumbled. And Whit had screwed up by being a jackass and not giving him the usual explanation before stringing him up.

"...But you want him on the team." It was almost a musing, thoughful question.

"It's not like I can hold special tryouts just for him, no matter whose son he is," Whitney muttered, rolling his eyes.

"So making Clark the Scarecrow was the only way to get him on the team?"

He'd barely had time to process that and realize that something had gone wrong before--

"And you made the call. You did it anyway, to somebody _not even on the team_ yet."

Whit almost tripped over his own feet. _Oh goddamnit, how did he--?!?_

"You did it, even though you'd been a Scarecrow yourself."

Whitney came to a complete halt, stock-still.

"You knew _exactly_ what it was like to have that happen to you, and you inflicted it on someone else _anyway_ , despite that," Luthor ended, talking to his rigid back. "Who the hell do you think you are! What gives you the right!?" he said, loathing dripping off of his tone.

Whitney turned on him. Luthor's eyes glittered with malice -- nasty, sneering -- ...and the slight triumphant smile that Luthor was sporting _died_ on his face as he got a good look at Whitney's expression in turn, and fear crept into his gaze.

_What gives me the right? It happened to me. **That** gives me the right. Not you. Not anybody else who **doesn't know**. **I** get the right to choose, **because** it happened to me. **Because** I know what it's like._

Whitney realized now that his snap-back response about the cross had been what had gotten him caught. In restrospect, there had been the slightest of pauses before Luthor had asked about 'how willing' they'd all been -- he should have pegged it right then, but he hadn't.

"Well, _congratulations_ , Luthor," he said in an even tone, with dry, biting sarcasm. "I told you it was none of your business, and you kept pushing anyway, you stupid little shit." Luthor _flinched_. "So now you're in it, deep in _my team's_ business, when I told you to back the fuck off for your own damn good." He towered over the man, his mere physical presence a threat. "So what do you think I'm going to have to do with you now?"

"You're not going to do anything," Luthor said in a confident tone, but his eyes told a different story.

"Why, because you'll go running to your daddy?" Whitney said patiently. "We're out in the middle of a cornfield, well outside of town, just you and me." He took a step forward, Luthor took a step back. "Who's going to stop me? Who'd even care?"

"Clark, he--" Luthor said, wide-eyed.

" _ **CLARK!!!**_ " Whitney bellowed at the top of his lungs, and Luthor flinched away. He didn't take his eyes off of Luthor as he did it. " _ **CLARK!!! CAN YOU HEAR ME?? HOW ABOUT ANYBODY ELSE?? ANYBODY ELSE AROUND HERE AT ALL??!**_ "

Silence.

"Yup, out here, all alone," Whitney confirmed. "Just you, and me, and nobody to stop me, because you certainly don't know how to fight worth shit," he said like he was discussing the weather.

Luthor paled as he realized that Whitney _knew_. "You won't get away with this. You think, you think that just because you're some football god to the town that they'll let you get away with, with _murder_?" he said with a wavering smile and a rising tone. "No-one will--"

"Do what? You and me, Luthor. You think they'll even find your body?" Luthor looked almost grey now as he realized how very poor his word choice had been. "Nobody knows we're out here. They sure as hell didn't know about Kent. They won't know about you." He paused. "Not when I'm through with you."

Luthor turned and ran.

Whitney tackled him to the ground, hard, and got up. He left Luthor shaking.

Luthor twisted and shoved himself up, and tried to run again.

Whitney caught up quickly and body-slammed him, and Luthor went down tumbling through the stalks. Whit followed him into the clear space by the scarecrow cross; they'd made their way back there already.

Luthor scrambled upright, scrabbling in the dirt like a maniac, and Whitney kicked his feet out from under him.

Luthor tried to crab away sideways across the ground as he yelled, "Stop!" desperately. "Please, stop!"

"No," said Whitney, and he kicked him in the ribs.

Luthor curled up like a pillbug and _wheezed_ , which Whitney was expecting, because he'd gone for minimal damage and maximum pain on that one.

And then, when he finally had his breath back, the guy yelled bloody murder and _launched_ himself at him.

Well, Whitney had a little more respect for him now. Not that that did him any good. Whitney sidestepped and punched downwards at his exposed neck. When Luthor collapsed, Whitney grabbed him and and hauled him up and over, then let gravity take over and slam him back down.

He left Luthor groaning on his back in the dirt, dazed and dizzily confused and panicky and panting.

Whit yanked Luthor's coat off him, and shoved him sprawling in the dirt again, under the cross. He took out the cellphone and threw it, out into the cornfield as far as he could. He wasn't going to be calling anybody for help, now.

"I can do this all day," Whitney told him, casually tossing the jacket over beneath the cross, because, really, he could.

"N-no," Luthor said, truly starting to panic now. "Don't--! _You don't have to do this_ ," he said through the involuntary tears of pain.

"You brought this on yourself," Whitney told him.

"I-- I just wanted to know!" Luthor said, angry and lost and scared. "That's all! I-- I had a right to--!"

"No, you didn't," Whitney overrode him. "You saw something you never should have seen, but that doesn't give you the right to know or even understand it." Luthor kept trying to scrabble back away from him, and Whitney kept moving in circles, keeping him corralled.

Luthor finally caught on to what Whitney was doing and, in a flash of frustration, tried rushing Whitney again.

It didn't go well for him.

Luthor's back hit the back of the base of the cross, and the back of his head impacted with a glancing blow, too.

He struggled for a moment, random confused motions, then came back to himself a little. He got his arms under him, looked up at Whitney -- and _shivered_.

" _Don't_ ," he begged. "I-- you don't even have any _rope--?!_ " he said, half-hopefully, half-fearing what he must be thinking Whitney might use instead. Poor bastard probably had nightmares about that shit, not knowing any better.

"Don't be _stupid_ ," Whitney spat out, grabbing him and tossing him back to the center of the dirt clearing. "I'm not stringing you up there. You don't _deserve_ it."

Luthor hit the ground chest-first, arms barely up in time to protect his head and face, and he was barely able to push himself upright, again, after that. He stared up at Whitney and when the meaning of the words finally seemed to hit him, he started to laugh hysterically.

Yeah, Whitney wasn't surprised by that reaction, either. It was an honor and a priviledge, though a terrible one.

"Believe me, I don't expect a little narc loser _shit_ like you to understand," Whitney told him.

"Y-you don't know me," Luthor said.

"I know what you were like in high school," Whit told him. "You were the guy in the corner with no friends. But instead of sticking to being a geek, you decided to be a loser, too. So nobody ever came to your defense, because you were a little shithead to anybody who gave you the time of day. You got beaten into the ground more than once, and you never won a fight, not even to a draw, not even close. But you were a narc and a _mean_ little shithead, so you got even in different ways, petty little spiteful ways, however you could find a way to dig the knife in, and that just had them all beating you down even harder, and so you'd do something else even more stupid to try and get even, and _you never fucking learned_. And you're not any different now, just older."

Luthor stared up at him, eyes wide.

"You think you can fool everyone? You think people like me can't fucking tell?" Whitney told him, throwing his hands up in the air, because how stupid did the guy think he was, anyway? "I've got to handle a school full of jocks and nerds and geeks and losers and shitheads and narcs, keeping everyone in line and following The Rules, while dealing with all the Problems causing Trouble, and you think I can't tell which one _you_ are within five-seconds-flat on sight?"

Luthor stared up at him still, and finally said, "I'm not a narc."

"The hell you aren't," Whitney said. "You went talking to Lana after talking with Kent. _Kent_ isn't a narc. He told you he didn't want anyone else knowing, and you went haring off after my girlfriend to tell her anyway." And Whitney knew that was what Kent had done for a fact, because that's exactly what _he_ would've said if anybody outside the team had found out about his own Scarecrowing. It stayed in the team. Nobody else was ever supposed to know. Nobody else would ever _understand_. Hell, not even the regular players did. Only the other Scarecrows ever _really_ did, and nobody talked about it, even then. Not past the first few days when you were putting yourself back together again, and you _had_ to say something or risk _shattering_ well past the breaking. It was private.

"I'm not a narc," Luthor said, more strongly, glaring up at him. "I never told on anyone."

"Yeah? Why not?" Whitney humored him.

"...Because it wouldn't have helped," Luthor finally said. Honestly. Weakly.

Whitney frowned down at him.

...Well, that was a kick in the nuts. He was pretty sure Luthor wasn't lying about that.

"Do you even know what a narc _is?_ " he asked.

"Yes," Luthor said, biting back a painful, bitter laugh. "I beat one into the ground, once. He was going to tell on a few of us, who had gotten the solutions to a test, who were going to cheat."

"And then what happened?"

"He died."

Whitney looked down his nose at him.

"You kill him with your bare hands?" Silence. Yeah, didn't think so. Idiot. "How did he die?"

"Got up, running away to get away from me, got run over by a car," came the terse reply.

Silence reigned for awhile.

"...And, what, you think you telling me this somehow makes us even? Knowledge for knowledge?" Whitney scoffed, and Luthor looked up at him with poorly concealed surprise -- yeah, guy was probably working on a concussion by now, or the pain was getting to him. Whitney sighed internally.

Out loud, he said coldly, "You think giving me _that_ is any different than giving away a truck? That doesn't mean shit. You know something you shouldn't. I'm going to make sure you never tell anyone else." He shook his head as Luthor tried not to blanch. "You telling me something doesn't mean that you aren't going to tell somebody else something else. It just means you told me something maybe you shouldn't have, that I never really felt like hearing." Because, really, why the hell would he ever want to know something like that? That wasn't any of his business.

"I won't tell," Luthor said suddenly, like it was the answer to life, the universe, and everything. The perfect solution to a multiple-choice answer on a pop quiz.

Idiot.

"Yes, you will," Whitney said patiently, stepping towards him.

Luthor backed up across the ground. "I won't tell!" he repeated, more desperately, trying to regain his feet, hands up.

"You already told when you didn't even know anything at all," Whitney said.

"It was a mistake!"

 _No shit, sherlock._ "You'll do it again."

"I won't!"

"I don't believe you," he said after a beat.

Luthor's face twisted up in anguish, rage, and hate.

He rushed Whitney again.

Whitney let him come in closer this time, easily dodged his practically flailing fists, grabbed him by the shoulders, and twisted around along with him. He hurled Luthor across the clearing and into the base of the cross. He hit it sideways, across the small of his back.

Luthor let out a yelp as he hit, then collapsed, twitching, lying on his side. Tears dripped from his eyes against his will at the wracking pain, and he shivered and tried to curl his limbs in close again as Whitney slowly walked towards him.

"I didn't know..." Luthor said weakly, almost sorry. "I..."

 _That I would do this if you kept pushing and found out this much of it?_ "I know you didn't."

Luthor squeezed his eyes shut.

"This isn't fair," Luthor said thinly, gritting his teeth.

"Life isn't fair."

Luthor got angry again, tried to shove himself up ...and couldn't. He collapsed.

Whitney squatted down in front of him. Luthor weakly tried to bat him away as Whit grabbed him by the collar and hauled him upright against the cross, but the multiple hits and general battering had him too dizzy and discoordinated to bring any real strength or leverage to bear.

Luthor tried to kick out a little from his seated position, but Whitney just slammed a fist down against a thigh and Luthor cut it out as he bit his lip hard, trying not to let out an accompanying whimper of pain.

The man's eyes were burning with shame, anger, pain, hurt, fear, a struggle that he wasn't giving up just yet, his mind working...

"You're trying to think of something you can say that will make me stop," Whitney told him.

Luthor jerked back, but he wasn't getting anywhere with Whitney's fist in his shirt and caught up against the cross like that.

"That's not--"

"Fair?" Whitney supplied.

"I'm telling the truth! I won't tell anyone else!" Luthor insisted, in frustration and despair. "How can I get you to believe me?!" Luthor blurted out, and yeah, that was how Whitney knew he was loopy.

"Time."

Luthor laughed on-edge. "I don't-- You aren't-- giving me that! I--" He looked more confused and less certain as he protested.

"I won't believe or trust that you won't tell anyone, unless you don't tell anyone," Whitney told him, as if explaining to a child. "The longer you don't tell anyone, the more I will believe you."

"But--"

"Were you lying about the narc?" Whitney asked.

Luthor looked a little thrown. "No," he said.

"You think I can't look that up? That I won't find out if you lie to me?" Whitney asked, shaking him slightly.

"No," Luthor said wide-eyed, grasping at his arm. "I--"

"What did you tell Lana?" Whitney interrupted.

Luthor looked blank for a moment, then almost shrewd. Whitney refrained from smacking his head against the back of the post. Instead, he watched poker-faced as all the various changing half-expressions flitted across Luthor's face as he tried to think through what he was going to say.

Finally, it settled on a resigned expression, and Luthor said, "I told her she was with the wrong guy, and told her she should ask you what you were doing before the big game."

"Did you promise Kent you wouldn't tell anyone about finding him up on the cross?"

"No," came the replay after a short silence. Luthor wasn't meeting his eyes.

"Did he _think_ you were going to stay silent?"

Luthor was silent a little too long, so Whitney pulled him forward and slammed him back against the cross again.

"Did he think you were going to stay silent?" Whit repeated evenly.

"Yes," came the reply after another long silence.

...Well, at least the guy wasn't lying to him.

"Promise that you won't tell."

"Okay," Luthor said hazily.

Whitney clenched and unclenched his jaw. " _Say it_."

"I won't-- I promise I won't tell anyone," Luthor said, almost as out of it, then blinked and straightened slightly. "I promise I won't tell anyone about anything about the Scarecrow-- Scarecrow things." He stared at Whitney. "Not ever."

Whitney stared at him for a long time, until Luthor was starting to shiver without his jacket on.

Whitney let go of him, and Luthor slumped.

Whitney stood, and said, "The next time somebody comes after you, you run, and you _don't_ let them catch you. And if you go down, you don't stop fighting until you can get up and run again." Luthor looked up at him confused. "Not everybody is as reasonable as I am. Not everybody will give you a chance to talk."

"...What?" Luthor said weakly, not understanding.

"Most people around here won't give a damn that you don't know what you're doing wrong. They just won't care. They'll grab you and beat you into the ground non-stop until _well_ past the point when you stop moving, if you step over the line." Whitney frowned down at him. "You want to last in town longer than a week? Make some friends, learn some goddamn self-defense that's worth a damn, and don't go sticking your nose in other people's business expecting not to get thrashed within an inch of your life, or worse."

"You..." Luthor said, staring up at him blankly, going wide-eyed.

"Were you lying to me about keeping your mouth shut?"

"No!" came the near-immediate response, along with a flinch.

"Didn't think so," said Whitney. "Don't make it into a lie later, and don't keep digging around for more."

At the look Luthor got, Whitney damn near growled at the moron. "You're never going to know everything. _Get used to the idea._ But if you can't keep yourself in check, you may as well tell me now so I can kill you clean, because if you pull this same shit at the _plant_ , poking your nose in places people tell you not to because they told you 'no don't do that', you'll end up dying a horrible death exposed to some godawful chemical shit or another and maybe take a bunch of other people along with you in the process," he said.

The blood slowly drained out of Luthor's face again. "I... I know chemicals. I-- am a biochemist. I wouldn't do that!" he objected, caught between fear and anger.

"It's the same damn thing," Whitney told him. "Learn what 'no' and 'stop' and 'don't' mean when somebody else is saying them, because I can guarantee that if you pull the same shit with anybody else in this town over things they don't want to tell you, they won't stop like I did."

Luthor's eyes went wide and he sucked in a breath.

Whitney turned to go.

When he was at the edge of the clearing, he heard, weakly, confused, "...I thought..."

Whitney stopped.

"I'm through with you," Whitney said without turning around. "I've made sure you won't tell anyone else." He paused for a moment. "And you won't tell. Will you." It wasn't a question.

Silence.

Yeah, he didn't think so.

Whitney kept walking.

He prayed that he was fucking right about Luthor, because it wasn't just his own life on the line if anything about the Scarecrowing got out.

It was Luthor's, too.

_Welcome to Smallville, fool. Try not to get yourself killed._

~*~*~*~*~*~

Whitney drove his dad's truck over to the Potter horse farm, and stopped off at the main house.

He washed the ground-in dirt off of his hands at the hose and wiped them off on a handkerchief before even thinking about walking up to the door. He sighed in a little relief that he hadn't gotten bloody over Luthor, because it meant he couldn't have drawn much blood from the guy, either. If the guy had really been here during the shower, then he'd probably heal quickly enough, too. No lasting damage.

He'd done what he'd had to do. Didn't mean he had to like it.

He was glad he hadn't had to go any further than he had, though. That shit always made him feel ill. Trying to be careful and calculating about it made him feel even worse, almost dirty inside, after it was over.

He sighed, shook his head, and tried to banish thoughts of Lex Luthor from his head. Either the guy was sorted now, or he wasn't. He'd done what he could, and he'd made his call. Whitney couldn't really do anything more about it, now.

Nell greeted him warmly out on the porch, and told him Lana was out in the barn. She even wished him luck, which probably meant that she knew something was up between him and Lana, just not the _what_ of it.

He took his time walking out to the horse barn. Honestly, he wasn't looking forward to it. He figured it was more than even odds that she'd be breaking up with him over Kent's Scarecrowing and losing her necklace. He knew most girls had broken up with other footballers for less.

Then again, Lana wasn't 'most girls'. Maybe he still had a chance?

...Yeah, right.

Finally, he told himself to stop dragging his feet and man up. He pushed open the barn door and stepped inside. "Your aunt said you were out here," he told her.

"How you feeling?"

Of course she'd ask about the crash first. She probably hadn't heard earlier when she'd cornered him in the hallway; he'd kept it to himself, and the rumor mill took time to grind through some things. She didn't even sound like she was setting him up for a lecture about the godliness of Kent coming to his rescue after he'd had a hand in his Scarecrowing.

God, he didn't deserve her.

"Better. That's not why I'm here, though." He took a deep breath and said, "Lana, when I saw you and Clark outside your house that night, I freaked out."

"What did you think we were doing?"

 _Talking._ But he'd gotten jealous, because he was on the outs and Kent was _supposed_ to be on the in, but was being such a little shit about it, and talking was always the first real step to...

Whit knew better about Kent. He'd been bouncing around, playing hero, and he'd never been a Problem before. And Problems didn't help people, not _ever_. But he'd convinced himself that that might be a possibility, despite all that, because he was feeling so resentful over haivng to look at Kent like he was his replacement, and everybody knowing it and expecting him to do the right thing, even though Kent was obviously after his girl -- right in front of his face! -- and the disrespect there was just...

If he'd really wanted Kent on that cross _only_ to have him on the team like he was supposed to be, he'd have told him what was what, given him the usual spiel, _explained_ , as much as anyone ever did beforehand. But he hadn't. Out of spite, he'd only spared the breath to berate the others when they were tying him up wrong -- one of the idiots had almost left him hanging by the wrists instead of shoving his elbows up over the cross-back.

He hadn't corrected Brent when he'd cracked wise to Kent, saying he was 'getting what he deserved' for haring after Whit's girl. And if even _Brent_ had picked up on that, well...

"I guess I got scared... and did something stupid. I would do anything to take that back." And not just for Lana, either, and wasn't that a kick in the teeth? He was sorry about Kent, too.

What he'd done was also going to cause problems with the team, because if they'd thought that it was acceptable to Scarecrow someone for going after his girl, like some kind of captain's privilege, then they wouldn't hesitate to beat someone else into the ground for going after their own. He was going to have to have a sit-down with Kent _and_ his team -- not at the same time -- and try and set the record straight _now_ , because by next year he wouldn't be _around_ to make sure they were doing things right.

And he knew he'd be breaking The Rules to do it with Kent, because Kent wasn't on the team, but Whit would have to do it anyway, because Kent deserved to know. You got the talk beforehand, and The Talk after. That was how it went. It was on Whit that he'd done it all wrong; he'd have to bear the brunt of it if Kent decided to narc after all and it all came out.

...And to top it all off, no matter _what_ happened now, Kent was probably _never_ going to join the team after everything that had and hadn't happened, and it was all his fault. He'd fucked up.

And he _did_ need to have that sit-down with Kent. Whit wasn't sure anymore whether Kent had actually been really told the truth of _anything_ by Mr. Kent, or if maybe it had changed over the years, somehow. Either way, Whit needed to be sure that Kent knew all of it, before--

He blinked and looked down as Lana touched his arm gently. Then he looked back up to see her giving him a small, sad, rueful smile. But... But he'd been more sorry about his screwed-up with _Kent_ than anything else -- her finding out, or even the necklace. So why would she...?

"It's too late, Whitney. She's mine now," Whit heard, and he knew that voice. His head snapped up and over, he took one look at the guy--

Shit.

 _Whitney hadn't been paying attention at the fair._ He should have followed up on his gut. He should have been thinking, using his head. He was bad with books but good with people, but he'd been so caught up in everything with Lana and Kent that he'd missed the _real_ Problem right under his nose! -- _Fuck_ , this was bad. The bug-boy had blown right past maybe-a-Problem and straight into **Trouble**. Whit could practically smell it on him; he didn't need the change in wardrobe to clue him in.

"Greg?" said Lana, confused, and it was all Whit could do to hold his ground and not tell her to bolt, because his heart wanted her safe, but his head knew that he wasn't the fastest runner on his team. If it became a flat-out race after Lana across open ground, he didn't know if he was faster than Greg. If he couldn't tackle Greg before Greg got to her...

Instead, he stepped out in front of her, clenching his fists. "Get away from her," he commanded.

The next thing Whit remembered was a blur of motion and seeing stars before everything greyed out.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Whit fully came back to his senses when he heard someone yelling "Lana! Lana!"

Whit groaned and levered himself upright. Fuck. He hurt almost worse than the car crash--

Oh.

Oh, that son of a _bitch_.

\--Bug-on-a-windshield, _his ass!_

And then Kent was kneeling down in front of him, taking up his vision, and then helping haul him to his feet.

"Greg's got her," Whit managed to get out, because at the rate Whit had been going with Lana lately, Kent might _deserve_ to know soon enough.

"What happened?" Kent asked, looking... fuck-it-all -- _concerned?_ Worried about _him?_ Shit.

Whitney shook his head, trying to clear it. Guy was unreal. "I'm not sure. Greg threw me against the wall like it was nothing, then grabbed Lana. I've never seen somebody that strong before." Because that was a warning worth sharing.

"Which way did he go?"

Whitney made a split-second judgment. "He headed off into the woods." He barely hesitated -- Kent could get killed helping him, but Whitney needed help, and by the time he got the crew together and got volunteers, Lana might be-- Arkin might _already_ have--

\--But Kent was _right there_ and _willing_ and fuck it if he would say no to that.

Besides, he'd already warned him what he was getting into.

And Kent didn't disappoint. "I think I know where he's going."

"Great. I'll drive," Whitney said, hurrying out to his truck alongside Kent and pulling out his keys.

"You know the old foundry that got hit with the meteor shower? Follow the dirt track. About a hundred yards back, there's a tree fort in the woods."

Well that was really fucking specific. "How do you know he's there?" --Shit, was he second-guessing Kent? He knew Kent and bug-boy weren't working together!

"Greg used to collect bugs there when we were kids."

Right. God, Kent had used to be friends with the guy, hadn't he? That had to be harsh.

And here he was, trying to stop the guy _and_ helping Whitney with Lana. Not to mention acting like -- god -- a team player. Like another quarterback would -- a peer. A professional.

So Whitney stowed his pride and said, "Look, Kent, I want to apologize," turning to him, because now was as good a time as any to start.

But Kent was _gone_.

Whitney glanced around, then got the chills, because what the hell?

Kent had given him a place to go looking, but he wasn't coming along with? That didn't make sense -- he cared about Lana too, didn't he?

...Was it a trap? Some kind of revenge for the Scarecrowing? But that wouldn't make much sense -- Greg could've killed him in the barn. Why would Kent send him off into a trap with Greg waiting for him when Greg was only interested in Lana? And Kent could have just as easily gotten him killed by just _not_ pulling him out of his truck the day before.

Whitney got into his truck and started the ignition. The grim thought came to him that Kent might get even by sending him in the opposite direction of where Lana was... but that would mean that Kent would be haring off after Greg on his own, and there was no way Kent could go up against a guy that strong and 'save the day' all by himself. Kent wasn't stupid; he would know that.

Then Whitney shook his head, stopped thinking for a second, and thought _fuck this_. The last time he'd listened to his head too much, he'd twisted himself in circles over Kent and made the wrong decision. So this time he went with his gut instinct:

Kent wanted to help Lana. He wasn't lying. Whit should trust him.

...Okay, but why had Kent run off?

Because he was a smart guy and he knew what was what. He was probably going for help.

Whit prayed that Kent would get him backup in time. He couldn't take on Greg alone.

He shoved the nervous fear down, shifted into gear, and started roaring down the road.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Whitney found the treehouse and clambered up to the top.

He heard insects buzzing and shivered as he glanced around. Where the hell was Arkin?

He saw the cocoon and kneeled down next to it, fearing the worst.

It looked like somebody had started to tear the white strands of whtever-the-crap this was off of her, so Whitney finished the job.

"Hey," Whitney said, as Lana started to wake up, gasping for breath.

"It's okay, it's okay, it's me, Whitney..." he told her as she started to become aware of her surroundings. He pulled more of the stuff off of her and gently hugged her close, telling her, "You're safe. You're safe. Come on. Come on." _Please be ok. Please let him not have..._

"Whitney? Is that you?" Lana said, and thank god, it was a miracle that she hadn't been hurt, or raped, or... worse.

He hugged her carefully, and slowly led her out of the treehouse. He kept an eye out as he did, tense, waiting for Greg to pop out of nowhere, but... it had looked like someone had been interrupted up there before Whit had arrived. Had Kent gotten here first?

Well, Kent did manage some kind of wind-sprints fast enough to catch up with the bus some mornings, and the road hadn't been direct.

But that just left Whitney wondering if Kent was ok.

Once they were on the ground, with no bug-boy in sight, Whitney started to relax. He curled his arm around her, and Lana did the same. They walked off slowly, back to his dad's truck, and Whitney heaved a sigh of relief.

For the moment.

~*~*~*~*~*~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN2: "What does that make us?" "Big damn Heroes, sir."


	2. Aftermath: Clark Kent

~*~*~*~*~*~

"Crazy place you've got up here," Whitney said at the entrance to the loft, glancing around. "Way better than that treehouse."

"Uh, thanks..." said Clark, wondering what the hell Whitney was doing here.

"Can I...?" Whitney asked, motioning up the last step.

Clark blinked at him. It wasn't like there was a door. It was only one more step.

But Whitney waited.

Weird.

So Clark nodded, and Whitney took the last step up.

"I need to talk to you about a couple things, Kent," he said, and Clark grimaced and wondered if his dad would be too mad if he tossed Whitney out the loft window.

Hmm. Star quarterback for the football team he used to play for? ...Probably, yeah.

So Clark sighed and sat down on the couch.

"How worried do I need to be about Greg?" he asked without preamble. "Should I be back over there with Lana right now?"

Clark looked up at him.

"Greg... isn't a problem anymore," he said finally, trying to think of a good way to explain. What had Chloe said again? Maybe he'd believe that Greg had a short life cycle like the insects, maybe?

Clark's thoughts were interrupted by Whitney saying, "Yeah?"

Clark looked up at the captain of the football team, who was looking down at him evenly, waiting for a response.

"Uh, yeah, he--"

"Are you sure?" Whitney said.

Clark blinked up at him.

"Are you sure that Greg's no longer a Problem?" Whitney repeated, frowning down at Clark carefully.

"...Yes," said Clark.

Whitney's face cleared and his shoulders dropped a little.

"Ok," he said quietly. Then, "Good. Good."

Then Whitney came over and sat down right next to him.

"So, about Lana..."

Oh. Great...

"Thank you. For helping me with her today."

Clark looked at him warily sideways.

"And I'm sorry she found out about you being the Scarecrow this year. If it was me she'd found out about, I'd've freaked."

Clark blinked.

And then he watched Whitney take a deep breath and say, "And I'm sorry about leaving you up on the cross for so damn long."

_...What?_

"If I'd known that you'd already--"

"Wait. Stop."

Whitney stopped.

"You're not sorry for stringing me up like that?!" Clark said.

"I-- Well--" Whitney looked uncomfortable.

"I don't believe this!" Clark exclaimed, getting up and glaring down at him. "You're not sorry for stringing me up like that!"

Whitney shot to his feet, too. "If I'd done it right, you wouldn't have said no!"

Clark stared at him.

"...What?" Clark said.

"If I'd-- ugh," Whitney groaned, scrubbing at his hair. "I'm going about this all backwards," he griped.

"What?" said Clark.

" _We don't Scarecrow anybody who's not on the team_ ," Whitney said, sounding aggrieved.

"I'm not on the team!" Clark protested.

"Yeah, but you should be!" Whitney shot back, poking him in the chest.

Whitney looked annoyed. Clark stared at him in disbelief.

" _What?_ "

"If you'd just tried out--"

"You don't know that I'd make the team!" Clark said, astonished.

Whitney looked at him like he thought he was stupid. "You do wind-sprints to catch the bus when you miss it in the morning, _and actually catch the bus_."

Clark stifled a wince. He really should stop doing that.

Whitney _kept going_. "You work on a farm, tossing around bales of hay and doing all sorts of shit that's ten times harder and longer than any weight training half the guys put themselves through! You're obviously a team player, given what you did today -- and you looked out for Ross all those years ago in first grade."

Clark went still.

"I thought..."

"What, that everybody forgot about that? Are you kidding? It follows you and Ross around like a stormcloud. Why do you think nobody messes with you-- jesus, you never even thought--" Whitney ended in a mutter, and then said something under his breath like "I'm an idiot" or something, Clark wasn't completely sure.

"You think I would have made the team if I'd tried out?" Clark asked slowly.

"Did your dad really tell you not to try out?" Whitney asked him.

Clark grimaced and looked away. "Yeah," he said finally.

"Why didn't you come to me?"

Clark looked back up at Whitney, who looked... angry.

"I would have talked to him," Whitney said.

"Why?" said Clark. He knew Whitney didn't like him.

"Everybody deserves a chance," Whitney said. "It's not your dad's choice to make, who gets on the team and who doesn't. It's ours."

Clark stared at him.

"Do you want to be on the team?" he asked Clark.

Clark stared at him.

He thought about it.

He said, "No."

Whitney sighed and looked... disappointed?

Whitney Fordman had actually _wanted_ him on the team??

"...Why did you string me up like that?" Clark finally asked.

"Because I can't just hold tryouts for one person," Whitney said, dropping back down onto the couch. "I couldn't think of another way to get you on the team."

"...Because only team members are the Scarecrow," Clark said slowly.

"Yeah," Whitney said.

"But I'm not a team member."

"But you should have--" Whitney stopped and sighed, sounding frustrated.

Clark dropped down next to him on the couch.

"Look, I need to tell you everything, all right? You deserve to know all of it, even if you're not on the team," Whitney said. "So will you promise to keep it to yourself?"

"I haven't said anything before--" Clark protested darkly.

" _I know_ ," Whitney said, rolling his eyes and sounding aggrieved again, "but I _just_ spent the afternoon with Lex-fucking-Luthor on my back, and finally had to get _him_ to promise to keep his mouth shut, and--"

"You told _Lex?_ " Clark said.

Whitney looked offended. " _ **No**_!" he said. "He only figured out the smallest _piece_ of everything, most of which I already just told you, and I had to... have a discussion with him, so he's not going to be going around getting any more of it out of anybody," Whitney said, glowering a little at him. "So could you _please_ humor me and just say--"

"Yes," said Clark.

"-- _Thank_ you!" said Whitney, collapsing back into the couch and letting out a breath.

"Okay, so. Yeah," Whitney said, suddenly seeming a little nervous. He ran his hands through his hair and looked up again.

"Every year, for Homecoming, one of us on the football team offers to get Scarecrowed."

"That's dumb," said Clark, crossing his arms.

" _There's a reason for it_ ," Whitney gritted out. "It's not just for luck for the game, just like we don't go sending the rumors around about Scarecrowing the worst loser-freshman _not_ on the football team for our _health_."

Clark stared at him. "You--"

"We do it on purpose, it's one of The Rules, it's there for a reason -- stop interrupting or I'll never get through this!" Whitney said. "I'll answer stuff later if there's something I don't get to, okay?!"

Clark felt uneasy, but nodded.

Whitney took another deep breath. "Okay. Christ. The Scarecrowing isn't something that the freshman footballers get explained to them completely, ok? Not even the regular squad knows everything. Not unless they go through with it. A freshman who does it... it goes differently for them. Softmores... sometimes offer. Juniors and seniors don't, generally because they know better, and it's too late anyway."

...This was making no sense at all.

"So, yeah, the way I screwed it up with you was..." Whitney seemed to steel himself, then barreled ahead. "I didn't explain anything that was going on, and you weren't on the team, so I probably shouldn't have done it at all, but if I had been doing it for the right reasons, I should've explained _more_ , not _less_ ," he said. 

"You didn't do it for the right reasons," Clark echoed.

"You were sniffing after Lana, and you _really_ pissed me off not trying out, and then when I thought that... it was something else, that just made it worse -- and you got into my head, ok? It happens. I'm sorry," he said. "I screwed up."

Clark didn't say anything.

And Whitney seemed to not expect anything from him. "What I should have said, was, well, that each year one member of the team offers to get Scarecrowed. They get hung on the scarecrow cross in Riley Field and it's for luck."

"You said--"

" _Don't interrupt_ ," Whitney said fiercely, and Clark snapped his mouth shut. "It's for luck, and it hurts like hell, but it's for the team. You do this, and you're part of the inner circle. Part of the core team. More responsibility, more is expected of you. You'd belong to us." Clark could feel his spine straightening, the way Whitney was talking so intensely. "It fucking hurts, and it's fucking insane to get through, but it's worth it. If you want it." And then he took a breath. "And then I'd ask if you wanted it."

To belong...

Clark shivered slightly, and realized that he would have said yes.

It scared him a little.

Clark swallowed hard.

Whitney nodded once, like he knew what Clark was thinking. Like he was saying, _Yeah, I thought so._

"And then we'd string you up there and leave you there," Whitney said. "And then, you'd break."

There was a pause.

"...What?"

"You'd break," Whitney said. "Everybody does."

" _I_ didn't," Clark said.

"Because you'd already broken once before," Whitney said patiently, watching him.

Clark stared at him, uncomprehending, because what the _hell_ \--

"Everybody breaks," Whitney said. "The freshmen we string up there, well, you expect somebody to come back after the game. Except nobody does."

Clark felt a chill up his spine.

"So you start wondering what's going on. Maybe you got the time wrong, because there's no way to tell time, out there. But you can almost hear the cheers and things in town. And then they die down. And you're left thinking, 'did they leave me out here?', 'did they forget me?' And all the while you're hanging there, hurting, and worrying that nobody cares, that maybe it was just a mistake, and then, eventually, you think, 'did they leave me here on purpose?'"

Clark swallowed, hard, against the lump in his throat.

"And, after that, you start thinking thinks like, 'maybe they lied to me' or 'are they laughing about it, right now?' and 'do they think this is funny?' and it just starts hurting worse and worse."

Clark started shaking slightly. He couldn't get the words out to force Whitney to--

"And eventually, you start to wonder, 'are they ever coming back?' and finally, when it starts to get really bad, 'has _anybody_ even noticed that I'm gone?' 'am I going to die out here, all alone?'"

" _Stop_ ," Clark croaked out, wrapping his arms around himself.

Whitney was watching at him.

He waited patiently while Clark got his breath back.

"Everybody breaks," Whitney said. "Sooner or later."

" _Fuck you_ ," Clark said quietly.

"You broke once," Whitney said. "You won't break again."

Clark looked up at him.

"It doesn't mean it won't hurt if it happens again," Whitney said slowly. "It just means that you can take it." He paused, staring deep into Clark's eyes. " _And you know it_."

Clark shivered again.

"We have two people on watch," Whitney continued in an even voice, and Clark started. "One guy sitting at the top of the water tower with binoculars, watching. One guy in a car, ready to book it over there. They wait, and watch, and when a guy breaks, the guy in the car gets the hell over there and gets the Scarecrow down. The guy on the tower watches until he's down, so he can call for more help if something happens in the meantime," Whitney said. "We use walkie talkies for most of it, but with cellphones, we can get an ambulance if we have to."

"But--"

"We can tell them it's an accident, but we're not about to have somebody die on us if they start fighting the ropes so hard that their arms slip over the side," Whitney said harshly. "If we didn't get people's elbows over the back and their feet up on the block to help hold the weight -- people die from crucifixion from suffocation, not blood loss. The weight of their own body hanging by their wrists and arms causes too much tension through their chest, and eventually it's too much to keep breathing. They're muscles; they get tired. Fatigued."

"It's still horrible."

"It's better than the alternative. Stick somebody in a coffin? They lose all sense of time. Screws people up worse than anything. Chain them down in a hunting shack? You're in a room in a small house; you try to get free and hurt yourself doing it. Nobody can see what the hell is going on, either. Chaining somebody up out in the open doesn't work if they're on the ground, because you either don't panic and it takes too long, or you snap and practically lose a limb trying to get loose. You don't want to do anything with water, because that can end up worse than anything -- necrotic tissue if they're in too long and there's some bacteria or something in the water, or pneumonia if it's even a little bit too cold."

Clark got a really sickening, sinking feeling.

"People have thought this through, ok? Years of people. Every year we talk it out, and we remember the reasons why things were done one way, and why they weren't. We add to the knowledge as we go. We're not just pulling this out of our asses, Kent. Some of our guys went reading up on psychology and medicine and shit for a long time, thinking about some of this."

"It's still horrible."

Whitney looked at him for a long time.

Finally, he said, "Yes, it is. But we sign up for it, and we do it anyway."

...Clark didn't want to think about that.

"So, the guy with the car gets them down. And once the guy with the binoculars thinks it's safe enough for the Scarecrow and he's calmed down enough, he comes down and gets his ass over there, too."

Clark frowned, because had there really been...?

"The first guy is the stoic one, because there's all that crying and screaming and freaking out going on, and somebody has to. But, yeah, stoic, not heartless or cold or anything. Solid. Helps calm the Scarecrow down, that everything's gonna be ok. The binoculars-guy is more, uh, emotional. Better at people. He's looking at somebody through lenses a good couple miles away, and trying to make a decision about stuff that most people can only tell really well up close. When he gets there, he's the more sympathetic one, when the Scarecrow needs _that_ , instead."

Clark shifted in place, feeling uneasy.

"The guy in charge picks 'em carefully, and the other previous Scarecrows all have to agree on them. Just like they've got to agree on the next Scarecrow. We don't go picking people who might _shatter_ under the stress."

"But nobody came for me."

"No," Whitney said sourly. "Because they're supposed to wait until you've broken, and you never _broke_ , because you'd _already_ broken before your Scarecrowing, and I should have realized that when you didn't put up enough of a fight getting hauled up there, even though I hadn't told you what was going on."

Clark stared at him.

"I'm sorry. I should've figured it out after I came back to make sure things weren't going bad, and heard that you'd hit the four-hour mark. I was dumb, and didn't think things through."

_...Whitney checked up on me?_

"I'd thought that maybe you'd needed another hour, or something. If you got pulled down too soon..." Whitney shook his head. "That does shit to a person, too. Bad shit. They think they're... invincible, or something. Something goes wrong in their head." Whitney looked up at him again. "But they never should have left you out past dusk. It gets cold and you were only in your boxers and... that's way too long to be up on the cross."

"...Did you tell them that? Clark managed to say.

"No, but believe me, they knew better than that," Whitney said. "Worst-case, I had my cellphone on me at the dance; they should've called." And he looked grim about it. "Trust me when I say, those idiots will _not_ be walking around unscathed after this. I am going to make _sure_ they don't stay that stupid, and they will _never_ be allowed on Scarecrow watch ever again, if I have anything to say about it."

"But they didn't ever come."

"No. They saw the first guy--"

"Jeremy Creek."

"Uh, yeah," Whitney said, blinking. He seemed to shake it off, then continued, "They didn't recognize him. But Trevor was about to send Geoff after you, after getting left _again_ like that--"

Clark shivered.

"--but he told Geoff to wait when Luthor pulled up. By the time they figured out what was going on, Luthor had apparently had you down and you had run off."

Clark bit his lip.

"And I hope the asshole was fucking considerate about it--"

"Don't you talk about him like that!" Clark said angrily.

Whitney gave him a long look. Then he said, "You need to be careful."

"He's--"

"--Not about that," Whitney cut him off. "The whole point of the guys coming to get you is to calm you down, help you pick up the pieces," Whitney told him. "We only do two guys for a reason, and even two guys is sometimes one too many."

Clark felt confused all over again.

"It's... the whole thing. It's... symbolic, almost. You get put up there as the straw man, the sacrifice play. Things go bad, you crack, you break, you fall, but the team is there to catch you and pick you back up again and help you put yourself back together again, stronger than ever."

Clark was having trouble breathing again.

"But we fucked it up and we weren't there for you when you needed us," Whitney said. "It doesn't matter if this was the second time for you or not, we still fucked it up. You, well, trusted us, and then we broke that trust. I'm not surprised that you don't want to be on the team, and I accept that. We weren't there."

"But Lex was."

"Yeah, he was," Whitney said sourly, "Which is why you need to be careful--"

" _Stop it._ "

"Chill the fuck out Kent, I'm not going to trash-talk him," Whitney said, looking annoyed. "You're going to have enough of a time feeling like you've got to defend being friends with him to your old man and everybody else. I really don't give a fuck about all that, ok? Whatever I think about him, I'll either keep to myself or say to _his_ face, not yours. This is something else. This is important, and you need to hear this."

Clark felt a weird relief, hearing that.

"The whole picking up the pieces thing -- it's important, who you see, who you talk to. It's only a few people, because if it was the whole team, well, it'd feel like feeding time at the zoo. Everybody staring, seeing all the things you don't want them to, while you're all broken apart. Sometimes, even _one_ person is almost too much. The guy on watch, he has to make a decision about whether to even let the Scarecrow know he was there at all. He's gotta be real careful on the approach, coming up to the cross in the field. Sometimes only the first guy stays. Sometimes, the second guy calls in a third or fourth. Usually, two is the right number."

...But what did this have to do with Lex?

"For your time on the cross, Luthor was the first guy. Or maybe Jeremy, except Jeremy left you up there like a fucking _tool_ ," Whitney glowered, "and if he really was a Scarecrow then he should've fucking _known_ better," he ended angrily.

Clark winced.

"And yeah, you'd already broken once before, and yeah, you picked yourself up and ran off on him pretty quickly, but he was the first guy. You're gonna be more attached to him because he was there for you. And you need to realize this, because he doesn't know about _any_ of this shit, and he might not feel the same way."

"He does," Clark said quickly.

"Maybe," said Whitney. "--I said _maybe_ , Kent! Christ! He went through his own fucking trauma there twelve years ago, who knows if maybe it fell out the same way for him," Whitney added as Clark nearly read him the riot act.

"And I'm not allowed to talk about it with him," Clark said darkly, instead, barey appeased.

"He's at least six years older than you, and not from Smallville, and not a footballer, or any sort of jock--"

"He fences," Clark put out there.

"-- _not the same thing_ ," Whitney continued without missing a beat. "He won't fucking get it. Nobody does, without going through it." He sighed out angrily at the glare Clark was giving him. "Look, if you think it's that fucking important, then you bring it up with the rest of us and we'll talk it all through together. If it's that important, and you've got a solid reason, we'll all say yes."

"And if you say 'no' and I do it anyway?" Clark challenged.

"You won't," Whitney said, like it wasn't even a possibility. "We'd not let it go until we all agreed on the same thing."

...Clark suddenly realized that Whitney had meant it more like a group of peers, not a ruling council that would veto his actions out-of-hand.

"Now, I've got a question for you," Whitney said, eyes boring into his.

Clark gulped.

"Did your dad break you the first time on the cross?"

Clark stared.

"What!?! NO!!" Clark yelled.

Whitney watched him, then let out a small sigh of relief.

"Why would you think that!?!" Clark demanded.

"Because you broke sometime, somehow--"

"I don't--" Clark began, but he got cut off.

" _Something_ happened," Whitney said. "Something that broke reality for you. Everything was on a solid axis, and you didn't even know it until it suddenly _snapped_. Nothing was right anymore. Everything _slid_."

Clark got a horrible feeling, and suddeny flashed on _the spaceship_.

And then _the bridge_.

...But it had really been the spaceship that had done it. He'd been... in shock from the bridge. Everything hadn't _really_ hit until he'd found out he was an alien.

"...Do you want to talk about it?" he heard Whitney ask.

" _ **NO**_ ," Clark said flatly.

"...Fair enough," Whitney said, in such normal tones that Clark had to look up at him again. "What, it's private, you don't have to talk about it. If you need to, then you need to, but otherwise it's nobody's business but your own."

Clark blinked at him, and his mouth nearly dropped open.

"It's like that with everyone," Whitney added.

"How the hell would you know?!" Clark cried out, because how the hell did he know about any of this, anyway?!? Why couldn't he talk to one of the other Scarecrows about all this??

Whitney looked at him evenly, and suddenly Clark finally got it.

" _You--_ " he breathed out, eyes going wide.

_\--elbows over, no, farther back, get his wrists higher up--_

_\--no, that's too slack, you idiot--_

_\--what the hell are you doing, I said wrap it around three times, not two! shit, no, make it four--_

...Because how _else_ would Whitney have known all that, what to do?

Oh god.

Whitney crossed his arms and looked at him evenly.

"Yeah, me," he said. "And Jason. And Tyler." He paused. "And you."

"But-- you--" Clark's mind was _reeling_ at this.

"The whole team knows which of us are," Whitney said casually. "Nobody talks about it outside the team."

Clark... didn't know what to think, he...

"I'll be setting some of them straight," Whitney continued. "Some of them might've thought that I was doing it just because you were panting after Lana a bit too much, but that wasn't really it. I would've asked you anyway, if you'd tried out for the team, so... I'll fix it with them."

" _...Why?_ " Clark asked.

"Because you're one of us."

"But I'm not _on_ the team," Clark said, trying to protest, but it came out half-hearted to even his own ears.

"It doesn't matter," Whitney said. "On the team, off it. You're still one of us. You're a Scarecrow. Nothing can change that, because _you've_ changed. It changes you. For the better. You had what it takes it before, and now everybody knows it, even you. It's a part of you that will always be there. You can't walk away from it; it's under your skin."

_Under **my** skin?!?_

Clark had the urge to laugh, cry, run, scream--

" _You're wrong_ ," Clark said, shaking his head. "I don't belong--"

"You do."

"I don't--"

"Kent, you _are_ \--"

"I'm a geek!"

"And I'm a jock, but those are just the labels that we've chosen," Whitney told him. "We can change them, if we want to. _We_ decide. Everybody does, really. There's always a choice. But we know it, maybe more than anyone else."

Clark shook his head again.

"You would have said yes."

Clark shook his head repeatedly.

"Well, if you hadn't, I guess Ross might have offered--"

" _ **NO**_ ," Clark said immediately, his head whipping up, because Pete couldn't have, Clark would have _killed_ anybody who tried, because it would have--

\--Whitney was smiling at him with a glint in his eye.

He looked like he'd known _exactly_ how Clark would react.

"Except he'd shatter under it, probably, so we'd have said no, just like you did," Whitney said firmly, still looking Clark straight in the eye.

...Clark was having a really hard time not crying just then.

"I'm sorry I had to ask about your dad," Whitney said, finally. "But I worried that he might have done something stupid, considering."

"Considering _what?_ " Clark said.

"Well, he was a Scarecrow twice."

...

...

Clark finally stopped blanking out long enough to say:

" _What!!!_ "

"Jonathan Kent was a Scarecrow twice," Whitney repeated. "He did it as a freshman, then again as a softmore."

"Why?!"

"He didn't last to the end of the game the first time. --It's not a contest, Kent," he added angrily. "We don't keep anyone on a stopwatch."

"So he had to do it again?" Clark felt sick.

"No," Whitney said, sounding resigned. "He went through everything. He broke. He put himself back together. He got back up again."

"Then why--?"

"Because it's generally assumed that nobody's going to start to really panic until after they know the game's over. Most people can hold out that long. But for whatever reason, your old man didn't. And for some reason, he felt like he had something to prove to himself. --Yes, himself. Nobody contested him being a 'real' Scarecrow, or any of it. So he did it again as a softmore, and he stayed up there for six hours, and he didn't break the second time."

"...that's how you know--?"

"--That nobody breaks a second time? Yeah. That, and other stuff. We keep track of each other. There's other situations, really stressful shit, that can happen in life. Grace under pressure, and all that. But your dad really brought the point home."

"Oh," said Clark.

"Yeah," said Whitney. "I take it he really didn't tell you about any of this stuff beforehand, then."

"Was he supposed to?"

"No, nobody's supposed to, outside the current roster, but given how you didn't struggle much at all going up..." Whitney said. "I guess I'm gonna have a whole _bunch_ of shit to add to The Rules because of you, Kent," he said, giving him a look.

Clark winced again.

"Don't feel too bad, it's my fuck up, but people won't make the same mistakes I did with you ever again with anyone else because of it," Whitney said.

...Well, at least that was something.

"But yeah, it's different for the softmores, though," Whitney said. "They sort of know what's going to happen -- that someone will eventually be coming for them. The freshmen don't."

Clark winced again.

"So, you got anything you want to ask before I start going over the rest of it?" Whitney asked.

 _...The rest of it?_ How much _was_ there?!?

Clark thought for a minute, quickly.

"You said it was for luck," Clark brought up.

"Yeah," Whitney said. "But not for just one lousy game. It's for the whole next year, and every year after that."

Clark stared at him.

"We're the lucky ones, and so is the rest of the team. The team gets somebody who's gone through that, who can handle the burden, who will bear the load for the team. We won't break. Ever. Everybody can count on us, even -- especially -- when it gets bad."

It... almost made sense. It was like something straining at the edges of his hearing, almost, only with thoughts.

"What about Jeremy Creek?" Clark said. "He wasn't on the team."

"No, he wasn't," Whitney said angrily. "And if it really was those comatose Crows that did it to him, then they'd better never wake up again, or they'll have to deal with me," he ground out. "I don't know what those bastards were up to that year -- he wasn't even on the List."

"What list?" Clark asked, confused. "Where is it?"

"The List," Whitney said. "It's... geez, not written down, it's an oral history. Everybody who was ever a Scarecrow, and when, and what year they were, and about how long..."

"Write it down," Clark demanded.

"Kent, jesus, we don't--"

"Write it down," Clark repeated. "I remember better that way."

Whitney frowned at him for a moment.

"Fine, but we're burning it right after," Whitney said. "Nobody else sees it."

Clark nodded.

He handed over a sheet of paper and a pencil, and Whitney got down to it.

...And he kept writing.

And writing.

And writing.

By the time he was done, Clark was staring agog at the three columns of names on the sheet and he'd realized that the List went back probably as far as the high school had existed.

...No, _further_.

_What the hell?_

"All this is just for football?" Clark said weakly.

Whitney frowned up at him as he finished. "Jesus, Kent, football's just for the fall season. We're the Leaders of the school. We deal with the Problems that cause Trouble, and we help keep everybody in line and following The Rules. We make sure everybody stays safe, or as safe as possible, anyway. We can't deal with everything, obviously," he said, setting down the pencil and looking over the list he'd written. "But we can try to do what we can."

Clark stared at him for a moment, then looked down at the List.

...Yeah, his dad's name was on it twice.

And his own name was at the top of the list. Clark Jerome Kent.

God.

He looked at the slot where Jeremy Creek's name should have been. It read Jeb Suyee Merrick.

Clark frowned, then grimaced.

He picked up the pencil and started copying letters over, crossing one out at a time.

"Hey, what are you--?" Whitney said, before falling into silence.

When Clark was done, ~~Jeb Suyee Merrick~~ was next to "Jeremy Ibus Creek".

"Anagram," said Clark.

"Sonofabitch," Whitney breathed out, picking up the paper.

His gaze moved on to all the other names he didn't recognize.

Then his jaw set.

~*~*~*~*~*~

By the time Whitney finally left that night, it was well past dark, and Clark's head was swimming with new knowledge.

 _Jesus_ , he thought. He'd never knew...

...Maybe that was kind of the point.

Well, he knew _now_.

God, Chloe would have a _fit_ over this if _she_ ever caught wind of it!

He sighed and collapsed backwards on the couch, staring at the ceiling.

At least one good thing had come out of it, sort of -- now Clark knew that all these weird things had been happening not just past the meteor strike, but before that. _Well_ before that. Unless he was understanding Whitney wrong, from the way he'd been talking. He'd been a little afraid to ask directly.

Well, maybe he could ask later...?

So, yeah. Smallville. Had apparently had more than its fair share of Psychopaths trying to Terrorize the populace for years and years. So all that probably wasn't only _his_ fault.

It made him feel a little better, because it wasn't _all_ his fault. ...But it scared him a little, too, because that _also_ meant that it was all way, way bigger than he could ever hope to deal with on his own.

...Except he didn't have to. When some of the stuff with Jeremy had come up, Clark had explained about Chloe and Pete and the Wall of Weird, and Whitney had... kind of given his blessing, or something. Like, Whitney would keep leading the Crows and the team for the usual stuff, and Clark and his friends at the Torch would... do stuff, too. And if Clark ever needed help, like backup with something, he could just tell the team and...

...that made him feel really weird? But also sort of... loved, sorta. Not really warm and fuzzy, but... he had people he could count on. Other people.

\--Not that he was planning on taking them up on it, because the meteor freaks were so dangerous that they'd just about kill anyone but him, and it had been a near thing even for him, being carproof, but... yeah. Still a nice thought.

Belonging.

Clark sat up and picked up the List again. Read through it, again, because he could.

So many people, who had felt the same thing he did.

It kind of made him want to cry.

Whitney had promised to track down the rest of the names, to make sure that there were no more anagrams. No more Jeremy Creek's.

Clark had made him promise to come to him first before doing anything, because he was pretty sure Whitney was literally mad enough to kill somebody over it if he found any more. Several somebodies.

Whitney had grudgingly gave in and promised.

The craziest thing was, this thing, that was a part of him? Wasn't an alien thing. Couldn't be. It... transcended, somehow.

He had people he belonged with, and that was both cool, and cruel. And cold.

Clark was still on the outside, in so many ways. And isolated, because he still wasn't part of the football team, and didn't really want to be, not after everything, and Whitney even _understood_ that, but...

...and this was the thing that really made him want to cry...

...his dad hadn't wanted him on the team.

Because he'd probably known that Clark would've _made_ the team, and then Clark would've been picked as the Scarecrow.

And Clark would've said yes.

And then Clark would've hung up there like an idiot, and not felt a thing, and maybe gotten bored after awhile and snapped the ropes. Or just done it accidentally.

And somebody would've seen him do it.

...And even if he'd stayed up there until they came back, he'd never have known what it was like. Not really.

Not without Lana's necklace around his neck, and sure he would have said 'yes' after the fact, but he'd been thinking of it what it had been like, knowing pain like that was possible. He'd never hurt like that before, had had no _concept_...

If he'd actually been asked, he might've said 'no' thinking it was too risky with his powers, and not gone through it all.

And then somebody else would have been up on that cross instead, and that just _screamed_ of wrongness to him.

But even after not trying out for the team, Whitney had still wanted him on it, and picked him.

And if Whitney hadn't had Lana's necklace on him...

Clark would've hurt someone badly, fighting them off. There'd been too many of them, and he'd have been too desperate to get away, worried about what Whitney was planning. He knew he would've slipped up somehow, too strong, or not strong enough.

His dad not telling him had almost gotten a bunch of other people hurt or even killed.

 _Not_ knowing had suddenly become riskier than knowing.

Well, one thing was for sure: Clark was going to be spending a lot more time with Chloe, trying to keep on top of things as she found out about them.

But, more importantly, his dad was keeping things from him, again. Still.

...Clark was not happy about that. Especially since he wasn't even sure how much the Scarecrowing had to do with it.

He _knew_ he didn't ever want to know what his dad would have to say about it, if he ever found out.

Clark sighed, got up and rummaged through a drawer. He found a match, lit it, then he held up and set fire to the List.

Aloft, paper burned. Sun-in-glory, flights of crows, a cross, more than a century of pain, all went up in smoke. Along with his name.

When it had burned all away, down past his fingers -- he hadn't even felt the heat -- he dropped his hand and looked down. He pulled out the lead box that Lex had given him.

He remembered the confused look on Whitney's face when he'd brought up Lana's necklace.

_Lex said he gave it to you._

_...You've still got it?_

_Well, you're going to give it back to her, right? It's her favorite._

It was like the guy hadn't even considered asking Clark to give it to him so _he_ could give it back to Lana.

...But then, Lana had read Whitney the riot act, Clark figured, with the way she'd come to apologize to him for Whit. She probably hadn't expected Whitney to come apologizing to Clark about any of it.

And if Whitney had apologized to him, he'd probably said something to Lana, too. It'd make sense, with the way the two of them had been hanging off of each other, walking away from the treehouse. Clark wasn't blind -- Lana hadn't been hugging him like she was afraid and had no choice. She'd been hugging him the way she always had, and so had Whitney.

He sighed as he hefted the box. Lex was wrong: this wasn't a trojan horse, and Lana wasn't a prize woman to win by storming anybody's gates. Lana wasn't that kind of girl.

And even if Whitney and Lana had broken up, Clark didn't want to be the second-prize who needed rescuing himself. He didn't want Lana to look at him like she had earlier that day, with apologetic pity, ever again.

He wanted to be the kind of guy, the kind of _man_ that Lana would want to be with, and going behind Whitney's back, handing it over to her and talking smack about Whitney, talking down about the Scarecrowing, was not the kind of guy he wanted to be.

And it didn't have anything to do with him being allergic to the meteor rock, or to having made a promise not to talk about the Scarecrowing stuff, either.

He could talk about only what she knew about; it wasn't like Whitney could object to that. He could easily just hand Lana the whole box and ask her to never wear it again, because of the bad memories, for both her and him. He could probably guilt her into it.

But that wasn't the kind of person he wanted to be.

He was better than that.

And if he couldn't be good enough on his own merits for Lana to want to be with him, then he figured he didn't deserve her.

Clark looked down at the box and felt a sudden resolve. He knew what he was going to do, and, when it came right down to it, it had nothing to do with Whitney or Lana at all.

...Well, except for making Lana happy. _That_ he figured anybody could get behind.

He smiled to himself as he walked down the stairs and out the barn doors. He felt better than he had in days.

~*~*~*~*~*~


	3. Aftermath: Lex Luthor

Lex was _furious_.

That braindead bullying little jock! How _dare_ he!?!

His hands were shaking as he got himself into the mansion finally. He didn't know how long it had taken him before he'd been able to stand, how long it had taken him to get to his car, how long it had been to drive home. It was all one unmarked blur in his head.

So was however long he'd been in that field, trying to find his phone, after he'd gotten back to his car, remembered what had happened to it, and, cursing, gone back into the field after it again.

He stripped down and mechanically got in the shower, racheting up the heat. Again. Then, again. He was still shivering, it had been so cold without his jacket, and then even with it on, he didn't know how long he'd been out there--

As he _finally_ began to warm up again, it suddenly occurred to him that he could've come back to the mansion, had someone start calling his phone repeatedly, and gone back and found it that way, by the ringtone sound.

He started cursing all over again.

He ran out of English -- only because he really wasn't feeling all that creative at the moment -- switched to Greek, and then decided to change up to Russian, because they were far more satisfying to belt out, and a lot bloodier, too.

By the time he finally came out of the shower, he wasn't shivering anymore, but he _was_ shaking.

He toweled himself off roughly, wincing at the aches and pains. He barely spared himself a glance in the mirror.

He stomped out into his bedroom -- refusing to characterize his movement as a stagger -- and started pulling on layer after layer of clothing. Loose, warm, heavy; he wrapped it about him like an armor against the world.

He brushes his fingers against the soft feel and bit back a whimper. It wasn't enough.

He turned around and started pulling large, warm comforters down out of the top of his closet. He bit back tears as he stretched to get them, his chest burning from the kick Fordman -- _the bastard_ \-- had dealt him.

He had a huge pile on the floor before he stopped, and he grabbed a few, pulling them behind him.

He threw one set onto the bed haphazardly, then tried to straighten it out. Then another, and they were starting to show the clumps badly.

He felt tears start to fall and he cried out in frustration, swiping at them. He couldn't even make his own fucking bed properly!

He couldn't call after the staff, his staff -- Lionel's staff? -- though, not like this. Not when he looked, felt like this.

And then he had a panic attack and staggered over to the door, locking it. But it was just a lock, and there were keys, and it wasn't enough. He had to shut them all out.

And so he frantically looked around and grabbed a chair and shoved the back of it under the doorknob before he stopped. His head fell forward against the wood of the door as wave after wave of shame and fury pounded down on him, bending him down.

He was shivering, shaking again -- _not warm enough, just not warm enough, that's all, that's all I need_ \-- and he fisted his hands against the door surface like claws and glared his eyes back open before he shoved himself back upright and forced himself to walk back to the closet.

He grabbed the next set, and got that onto the bed, too. He stopped trying to make everything perfect, ok, fine, and gave up on it, his tattered pride falling apart to shreds. He was trading it all for the merest promise of warmth and safety and _he didn't care anymore_ he just needed--

He was bent over and whimpering by the time he burrowed under the nest he'd made for himself, and he well and truly hid under and inside it. He pulled the covers over his head and refused to even leave himself the space to peer out, because he didn't need to, wouldn't need to, _the door was locked and no-one could get in and the blankets were too thick for someone to be able to hurt him through them--_

He breathed and breathed and felt himself fall the rest of the way apart and he cried and cried but didn't scream because no-one would hear him, and if he did scream then they would just laugh and jeer and point and he _hated them all--_

But he hated Whitney Fordman most of all.

He was wrong.

He was _wrong_.

The world didn't work that way.

People weren't like that.

Fordman was _insane_.

People _didn't do that_.

He'd been talking and happy and annoyed and annoying and pissed off and bantering and flirty and just an idiot, an annoying idiot.

And then he hadn't been.

Because Lex had crossed an imaginary line.

And then he'd beaten him, and Lex had been sure that he was going to kill him, and then he... hadn't...

And it was just a fluke. Just Fordman. It had to be. It was just Fordman, insane.

It was just Club Zero, an accident.

Lex shuddered as he remembered the look on Jude's face, right before he punched him. The look on his face, right after he pulled the knife. Right before he'd stabbed him. Right after he'd stabbed him.

The look on Amanda's face, right before she picked up Max's gun and shot Jude.

It had been insane. It hadn't been his fault. It--

If he hadn't told, shown Amanda, it--

It would have been worse, right?

It wasn't--

_\--Most people won't give a damn that you don't know what you're doing wrong. They'll grab you and beat you into the ground non-stop until _well_ past the point when you stop moving, if you step over the line. Don't go sticking your nose in other people's business expecting not to get thrashed within an inch of your life, or worse.--_

He curled up into a ball and whimpered.

It wasn't his fault.

It wasn't his fault.

He hadn't meant to.

_\--You think you can fool everyone? You think people like me can't fucking tell?--_

_\--I know what you were in high school. You were the guy in the corner with no friends. You chose to be a loser.--_

_\--Nobody ever came to your defense, because you were a_ mean _little shithead who got even in petty little spiteful ways, however you could find a way to dig the knife in.--_

No! No-one had ever told him--!

He hadn't meant for it to happen!

_\--I know you didn't know.--_

_\--Life's not fair.--_

_\--You brought this on yourself.--_

He hadn't meant for it to happen! Jude, Amanda...

_\--Get away from me! You want to be one of them so badly, Lex? Is that it? You can't stand being a loser like me? Well, congratulations, buddy. Now you're their friend.--_

_\--Duncan!--_

_\--Oh my god!--_

_\--_ You never fucking learned _. And you're not any different now, just older.--_

...Duncan. Oh, god.

It wasn't a fluke.

_It was **him**._

_\--Well,_ congratulations _, Luthor._

_\--It was none of your business, and you kept pushing anyway, you stupid little shit, so now you're in it, deep, when you were told to back the fuck off for your own damn good.--_

_So what do you think we're going to have to do with you now?--_

No no no.

No no no no NO!

Lex curled up even tighter and squeezed his hands over his ears.

_\--What, are you gonna go running to your daddy?--_

_\--We're all alone. Just you, and me.--_

_\--So who's going to stop me? You can't.--_

Shut up shut up SHUT UP!

_\--There's nobody around to stop me. Who'd even care? --_

**No!** He-- he had people who cared! He--

Clark! Clark would! Clark would care! Clark would help him! Clark, and-- and--

_\--You want to last in town longer than a week? Make some friends and learn some self-defense that's worth a damn.--_

_\--The next time somebody comes after you, run and_ don't _let them catch you. And if you go down, don't stop fighting, get up and run again. Not everybody is as reasonable as I am. Not everybody will give you a chance to talk.--_

...What? No, that--

No.

No.

NO.

That... that didn't make any sense! That--

_He got up and ran, and he was hit from behind. He hit the ground so hard it felt like he'd bounced._

_It hurt so badly. Everything hurt so badly._

_He flashed back on Oliver at Excelsior, standing over him, sneering, eyes glinting with glee at his pain._

_No no no not again!_ Not again! __

_\-- **Stop! Please, stop!** \--_

_\--No.--_

_Pain exploded in his chest._

_He curled in around himself, wheezing, tears running down his cheeks that he couldn't stop because, oh god, the pain. He clenched his teeth down on an animal whine._

_He lay there in the dirt while Fordman stood over him, eyes cold, watching. Waiting._

_It hurt it hurt it hurt_ he was going to fucking kill him! __

_Finally, finally he got his breath back. Finally, he was able to get up, screaming, and--_

Lex shivered and brought his hands down to his chest, probing, wincing.

...He didn't have any broken ribs.

Oliver had given him broken and cracked ribs enough times for him to know what that felt like, and he didn't even have...

...why didn't he have...

_\--They'll grab you and beat you into the ground non-stop until _well_ past the point when you stop moving.--_

Lex shivered, because Oliver had done that sometimes.

Whitney had stood there and waited. He'd only kicked him once. And not even hard enough to...

\--Sometimes, Oliver had just stood there and kicked him back down every time he'd tried to get back up.

He'd stood there with a pleased, superior glint in his eye, and a wide grin on his face, and waited.

Whitney had stood there with a cold, resigned look in his eye, and a slight frown on his face, and waited.

_\--Not everybody is as reasonable as I am. Not everybody will give you a chance to talk.--_

Oliver had never really listened. Not really. Not unless he thought he could make it hurt worse if he did.

Oliver had listened and laughed and called him a liar and a loser and then beaten him back down again.

Whitney had listened and frowned and called him a liar and a loser and then gotten up and walked away.

Why?

...Because he hadn't really wanted to hurt him, and because he'd finally believed him.

Because he hadn't really wanted to hurt him, and because he was...

\-- **No!**

Lex screamed out, down into the mattress, in anger and pain and betrayal and soul-deep hurt.

He didn't know _what_ the hell Fordman was, but he wasn't his friend!

You didn't beat up your friends!

You didn't _ever_ beat up your friends!

_\-- **Duncan.** \--_

_Reaching out._

_\--Get away from me!--_

Lex sobbed.

That wasn't...

Nobody ever got forgiven for...

...Nobody ever beat up their friends and then got forgiven for it. There was no excuse.

You never forgot something like that. It didn't just go away.

_\--Help me.--_

_Twelve years ago._

_\--Help me.--_

_\-- **You want to tell me what happened last night?** \--_

_\--It was just a stupid prank.--_

_\-- **You were tied to a stake in the middle of a field. Even the Romans saved that for special occasions. You could have died out there.** \--_

_\--I appreciate your help. I just want to forget it happened.--_

You could never forgive something like that. It didn't just go away.

_\-- **That's an unusual necklace. How come you're not wearing it?** \--_

_\--I lent it to my boyfriend. Whitney Fordman.--_

_\-- **The kid that Kent saved today? Just came back from seeing him. He's lucky Clark was there.** \--_

It didn't...

_\--You think that there's a tally sheet somewhere, that somehow makes you 'even'. It doesn't work like that.--_

_\--It doesn't work like that, because_ he _doesn't think it works like that, and_ he _is the one you're trying to get along with and impress, right?--_

Lex swallowed hard. Lex never forgot or forgave something like that, but Clark didn't think it worked like that.

_\--You know something you shouldn't. I'm going to make sure you never tell anyone else.--_

_\--...You think giving me_ that _means shit? You telling me something doesn't mean that you aren't going to tell somebody else something else. It just means you told me something you shouldn't have.--_

Lex knew that knowledge worked like mutually-assured destruction, but Fordman thought that that didn't even the scales in the slightest.

...If someone had a nuclear weapon, and gave you one, too, did that really mean that the first one wasn't willing to use it?

It did if they were sane.

And cared.

And didn't hate you so much that they didn't care about the consequences of their actions anymore.

 _\--Nobody ever came to your defense, because you were a_ mean _little shithead who got even in petty little spiteful ways, however you could find a way to dig the knife in.--_

He'd known about Jude. Jude had warned him off saying anything. Lex had brought Amanda to the club without saying anything, to let her _see for herself--_

Zero consequences. It didn't work that way.

_Jude, a knife, twisting, teeth bared in a feral grin of revenge._

_Amanda, a gun, a single shot, tears dripping from her eyes with the harshest unforgiving stare._

There were no consequences when you just didn't care about what happened, after.

Except when there were.

Jude was dead, and he'd not talked to Amanda once since that day, no longer friends.

Duncan was dead, and Oliver and Alden and Geoffrey had just kept on bullying him, worse than before.

There were consequences. They just happened to everyone else. Collateral damage.

_\--If you can't keep yourself in check, if you pull this same shit at the _plant_ , you'll end up dying a horrible death exposed to some godawful chemical shit or another and maybe take a bunch of other people along with you in the process._

_\-- **I wouldn't do that!** \--_

_\--It's the same damn thing.--_

Lex finally tallied up his bruised and aches, and for the first time he wasn't just doing it so he'd know exactly how much he'd need to get even later.

He squeezed his eyes shut and thought about the glimpse he'd gotten of himself in the mirror, and realized that he didn't even look that badly off.

It had hurt a lot, but there had been no real lasting damage.

On purpose.

...Why?

_\--Not everybody is as reasonable as I am.--_

But why?

 _\--You're never going to know everything._ Get used to the idea. _\--_

_\-- Learn what 'no' and 'stop' and 'don't' mean when somebody else is saying them.--_

_\--If you can't keep yourself in check, if you pull this same shit with anybody else in this town over things they don't want to tell you, they won't stop like I did.--_

Lex shivered again and curled up, tucking his arms around his legs.

His chest ached, his back ached, but the burn wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been, and he knew that.

And he knew Fordman must have known that.

Fordman had stopped anyway.

_\--If you pull this same shit with anybody else in this town over things they don't want to tell you...--_

Lex had kept pushing with Fordman, and he'd barely gotten out alive. And there was more to know, and he'd been warned off.

There was more to know about Clark, and Clark had lied to him already. Clark had effectively said, 'don't push, don't ask, I'm not going to tell you'. He'd been warned off.

If Lex kept pushing with Clark...?

Lex thought of Clark -- moody, half-cheerful, sarcastic, joking, softly-smiling Clark -- and he imagined him suddenly going cold the same Whitney had.

One step over an imaginary line.

Push too hard, and dig too deep, and...

Lex shivered and pushed the thought back. If Clark ever looked at him like Whitney--

Would he stop?

...If Clark ever looked at him like _Oliver_ , teeth bared in a rictus grin, beating him down, **happily** , _enjoying it_ , because he deserved it, because _he'd gone too far_ \--

He couldn't.

He'd rather die.

He _couldn't_ \--

He'd rather _die_ than _ever_ \--

_\-- **How can I get you to believe me?!** \--_

_\--Time. I won't believe or trust that you won't tell anyone, unless you don't tell anyone. The longer you don't tell anyone, the more I will believe you.--_

_\-- **But you aren't giving me that!** \--_

Lex suddenly realized that Whitney was taking a chance with him. He hadn't lied, but he hadn't really meant it before, when he'd said he wouldn't tell. He'd have found a way, the first chance he'd got--

 _\--You were a_ mean _little shithead who got even in petty little spiteful ways, however you could find a way to dig the knife in, and you're not any different now, just older.--_

\--up until the last time Whitney had had him promise.

_\--Don't make it into a lie later.--_

When Fordman had questioned him, he hadn't lied, not once, not on the things that had happened, but he hadn't told the whole truth until he'd been called on it and pressed.

But that last time, he'd been beyond desperation, beyond surviving to be able to think of seeking revenge later, beyond _everything_. He'd promised, and meant it, and not just at the surface, either.

_\--Don't make it into a lie later.--_

Which was just another way to say _Keep your promise_ when you might mean it at the time, but...

 _\--You were a_ mean _little shithead who got even in petty little spiteful ways, however you could find a way to dig the knife in, and you're not any different now, just older.--_

Whitney had known.

_\--You think people like me can't fucking tell? You think I can't tell within five-seconds-flat?--_

Would anybody else?

...Whitney was taking a chance with him.

_\--I told you to back the fuck off for your own damn good.--_

What would happen if he told?

_\-- **You could have died out there.** \--_

_\--I appreciate your help. I just want to forget it happened.--_

...Did he really want to find out?

...

...How bad could it get with Clark?

_\-- **How can I get you to believe me?!** \--_

_\--Time. I won't believe or trust that you won't tell anyone, unless you don't tell anyone. The longer you don't tell anyone, the more I will believe you.--_

...He didn't have to take a chance with Clark. He had time. He could keep the accident to himself. He could... look into things, discreetly. Keep it to himself. And if... _when_ he found out...

_\--I won't believe or trust that you won't tell anyone, unless you don't tell anyone. The longer you don't tell anyone, the more I will believe you.--_

...he'd still keep it to himself, and wait. He'd wait, and wait, and when the time was enough, he'd tell Clark that he knew, and he'd tell Clark how long he had known, and it would be okay. Clark would trust him. Clark would believe him, because he'd had, they'd had the _time_ to.

Lex breathed out a little more easily, uncurled slightly.

He could do this. He could push... a little. Only a little.

_\--Learn what 'no' and 'stop' and 'don't' mean when somebody else is saying them.--_

Lex would back off when Clark lied, not call him on it. That wouldn't be crossing the line, right?

_\-- **I just wanted to know! That's all! I had a right to--!** \--_

_\--No, you don't. You saw something you never should have seen, but that doesn't give you the right to know or even understand it.--_

He... he could wait. He could... look, but very very slowly. Cautiously. He was a part of that car crash, too.

_\--You're never going to know everything.--_

Maybe... maybe he wouldn't get to know all of it, but shouldn't he get to at least know some of it?

It was his life, too!

_\--You want to last in town longer than a week? Make some friends and learn some self-defense that's worth a damn.--_

He had Clark. He... had survived Whitney, whatever the hell he was.

And he _did_ know some fucking self-defense worth a damn, he'd just been... a little out of practice.

_\--You don't know how to fight worth shit.--_

He was just out of practice, used to using swords instead of fists, that's all!

_\--You've gotten beaten into the ground more than once, and you've never won a fight, not even to a draw, not even close.--_

He'd never thought a fist-fight was something that... that he'd have to be good at, now that he was a man grown! He hadn't thought that schoolyard bullies would grown up, too, and--

_\--welcome to Metropolis and the Suicide Slums, home to robbers, muggers, rapists, good old boys drunk on too much alcohol--_

\--he'd just practice, he'd learn! He'd set up a gym, practice on punching bags, go running around the grounds. He'd learn how to run, how to fight!

_\--You don't know how to fight worth shit.--_

He'd have been able to land at least one punch if he'd just been... if he'd...

\--It wasn't his fault, it hadn't been a fair fight! --He'd been thrown by the cornfield, damnit!

He'd barely been able to venture into it at night. It was only after he'd heard Clark's weak call for help that he'd been able to force himself in.

In broad daylight, though...

He'd had the taste of ashes on his tongue, in the back of his mouth. Every whisper of corn-on-corn had been the wind rush right before he'd been knocked off of his feet by the blast. He kept expecting the horrible wash of pain, the slamming of an unstoppable force into his back--

_\--Sure, except for maybe the nightmares and flashbacks you're gonna give yourself coming back here alone. Kent being up there in the middle of the night doesn't count as 'with you'.--_

And that had been when he'd been on the side of the road.

If he hadn't thought he'd heard human movement over at the cross, he'd never have been able to force himself in yet again. He'd convinced himself that there might be another Scarecrow there, needing help, and...

_\-- **You did it, even though you'd been a Scarecrow yourself.** \--_

_Whitney came to a complete halt, stock-still._

Lex curled up again, under twelve blankets and three shirts, and laughed hysterically.

He laughed, and laughed, and laughed until he cried.

And he cried and cried until he was sobbing and could barely breathe, and then he laughed some more.

Eventually, he drifted off to sleep.

And for the first night in a long, long time, he didn't have nightmares about people hung up on a cross, a nightmare of teeth, fire raining down from the sky.

No, it was just a bare dirt circle, surrounded by grass, and sometimes corn.

Fordman was there, kicking him down, expressionless.

And Fordman kept at it, and at it, and at it... but it didn't really hurt.

And then he finally let up.

And then Lex got up, because it was his turn.

And then he beat Fordman senseless with a smile on his face.

Weirdly, Fordman was smiling, too.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Much, much, much later, Lex (accidentally) told Fordman about these dreams once.

Fordman just turned to him and said, "But you're not having any nightmares about Scarecrow stuff or the meteor shower anymore, though, right?"

And Lex stared at him and nodded once.

Fordman asked, "When we fight, do you win?"

Lex nodded again.

And then Fordman laughed, clapped him on the back, and said, "Good!"

And then he walked away, leaving Lex blinking and speechless.

Later that night, when Lex finally figured it out, he _murdered_ a punching bag with his fists.

And then a sword.

...And then he felt oddly better.

~*~*~*~*~*~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN3: Next up is "Aftermath: Clark and Lex". I'd write it today, but I have a shit-ton of work I'm really behind on _because I've been writing fanfic too damn much_. *glares at fic*


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